On 7/11/07, Kenneth Gonsalves <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
On 10-Jul-07, at 6:45 PM, Philip Tellis wrote: >> can some one tell me what does one require to develop virus for the >> linux kernel or gnu OS? > > One requires a stupid (or at least clueless) user. There are > millions of them around. but no one has answered Krishnakanth's question: given a stupid user who downloads and runs an executable containing a virus - can this executable 'infect' other executables and propagate in linux?
There is no reason why it cannot. If not root privileges it can access the user's data. And since Linux doesn't allow easy escalation of privileges it can create a keylogger process and wait till the user installs a new software or such. There is nothing in elf format that says you can't have malicious code in a given executable. Its also one of the reason why SELinux and AppArmor and chroot are considered on enterprise desktop. Heh, given that the user is already conned into getting and running the software it doesn't take much to con him/her some more. regards, C -- http://mm.glug-bom.org/mailman/listinfo/linuxers
