January 2008 Archives

Over at Daring Fireball, John wonders how malware would spread if OS distribution were more even. I actually wonder if it wouldn't cause multi-platform malware to develop. This is starting to get outside my area of expertise, but if a viral application contained an .exe, a dmg, and some type of Linux executable as well as knowledge of vulnerabilities on each platform, it would be able to infect any system, not just systems of a certain OS. Once running, the virus should be able to determine the flavor of another host, and to then exploit a vulnerability there and replicate the whole organism with the applicable executable running.