Mr Jo-Erlend Schinstad,

Virus is an application that forces computer not to work properly.
Notice that most Windows viruses nowdays are not copying itself to other
executables, they're just starting when computer starts (they're placed
in registry -
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE/Software/Microsoft/Windows/CurrentVersion/Run if I
remember correctly).

Recipe for virus:

Write a Firefox extension that will contain malicious code using this
bug, use _UNPROTECTED_ .bashrc file in user's directory and start this
app by doing:

sleep 10; DISPLAY=:0 ./virus_start

With this trick someone can hang user's desktop 10 seconds after he logs
in. User only needs to download this extension (and this is possible to
create such file because it's possible to save wallpaper in user's home
directory from Firefox).

Of course this code needs to be injected to .bashrc, which is not write-
protected (normal user can modify his own bashrc file). So this IS
clearly a security issue. You see, most Windows computers are infected
because of users installing software from P2P networks. Anyone can even
post an application on GnomeFiles.org, no one checks these. If someone
will install such app (even from DEB package) on his computer, you known
what can happen. So IMHO this should be fixed immediately! With this
trick, someone can make user's computer unusable. Before someone figures
out to check .bashrc, user will reinstall Linux or install Windows. You
can even name the virus instead of "virus_start" something like "gnome-
session" or similiar. Any app from Gnomefiles or Firefox extension can
make the executable working by doing "chmod +x virus". See? No need to
infect other executables in order to destroy a system.

If someone will post that "this app on Gnomefiles makes computer hang on
every boot", virus could activate for example on 1st of September.
That's why I think that bug with hanging desktop should be fixed with nr
1 priority.

But there's another thing:

This X11-hanging bug happens in Fedora 11 too, so it's not Ubuntu-
specific. I am trying to reproduce this bug by writing a test case, no
luck though.

-- 
[Jaunty] alarm-clock causes screen to freeze
https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/321176
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