Virus question...

[Rokkuman]

I was wondering, can the plan and simply prescence of a viral file cause your computer to be affected? Or must it actually be excecuted?

[Zack]

No, it must be executed. Otherwise those email clients that automatically download attachments...would be bad, because viruses could kill your computer without you even clicking on them.

[SJ Zero]

There's also the viruses which put themselves into your STARTUP folder, which infects you the next time you reboot.


(stupid bugbear!)

[TheBigBasicQ]

well, the virus files need to be executed. But the latest viruses use such techniques that you wont even come to know that a virus has entered your system and has already infected.

So if you plan to have a virus file on your system then you should rename it, esp. change its extension.

[Zack]

A common trick is to email a really long filename to someone, like..."notaviruswow.txt.exe", and so many email clients only will show you the first few characters of it, leave out the .exe, you think that it's only a harmless .exe, and...

[SJ Zero]

By many, you mean one, right?

[Zack]

No, I mean...many. Outlook express (now you're going to MS-bash :roll: ), Eudora, I believe, and almost all web-based email services.

[red_Marvin]

There's also the viruses which put themselves into your STARTUP folder, which infects you the next time you reboot.

Well, yes but the virus file must be executed in order to put itself
in the startup folder...

Pandoras box is harmless until you open it...

[Z!re]

A virus can not and will never run itself. [period]

All this hype you see in the news about: "Do not open emails from unkown people, cause when you read them they will destrou your computer" is just hype, no real facts or anything.

You remember SOBIG? (not sure it was this virus, but I think it was, correct me if I'm wrong) it was declared as the most harmfull virus ever (on the news) and all it did was a DoS attack on a website. Yeah, real dangerous.


Virus never infect computers, it's ALWAYS the users who let them in, I've had computers for over 6 years now, and I've only had a virus once, and that was after my sister borrowed it for a school paper.

I'm sure most of us here have never been infected with a virus, am I right? Because we don't open unknown email attachements or run files without scanning them first.


Simple tip to avoid viruses: Don't let anyone else use you'r computer, especially Parents, Sisters and Brothers. It will only end in tragedy if you do. :lol:

[LooseCaboose]

A virus can not and will never run itself. [period]

A lot of buffer overflow bugs allow code to be executed where it wouldn't normally. I cant remember the exact details (so correct me if Im wrong) but there was an exploit in DirectX that allowed a user to append some extra information to a picture file, a buffer overflow bug in DirectX would execute that extra information.

Some homepage hijacks can add information to your registry and alter your homepage by exploiting buffer overflow problems in explorer, all you have to do is visit an offending webpage.

I dont know if you consider that as a virus running itself, but it is slightly harder to avoid than knowing not to execute a file called notavirus.txt.exe