>http://www.cnn.com/2002/TECH/internet/06/13/picture.virus.ap/index.html

I've head of no reports of it in the wild, so how'd they get a hold of it? I think this puppy was grown in an AV software company lab, and it is just another attempt to create AV selling FUD on ALL OS platforms, especially the Linux platform. It will have no effect on a Linux OS, and only a rank Linux Newbie would think it possible.

A real viri has to accompany it in order to 'extract' the payload, so what's the point? The viri may as well pack its own payload.

Stupid, just like that putative Linux-WinXX crossplatform viri. It rates as an 'honor' virus -- "Please pass this email on to all of
the addresses in your address book and then delete all the files on your hard drive."

AV software will not be an economically viable business on the Linux OS, and I think they are beginning to realize it. In five years of using Linux I have never had a successful viri attack on my box. In my mailbox I have had countless WinXX viri trigger harmlessly or fail to trigger at all. It makes doing a post mortum easy and risk free. Under WINE, I once fired the SirCam viri just to see it work. It was easy to follow and the results were easy to reverse. All the changes stood out like a sore thumb, and none could in any way affect the Linux installation. In fact, only those who run their Linux installation as 'root' or have no root password, which are really stupid things to do, will ever be affected by a linux virus, if a serious one ever appears. The worst thing that could happen is the a user's account files are deleted, which would take all of 30 seconds to recreate, and a minute or two to restore other files from backups.

JLK