Re: virus extensions

From: Christopher Browne (cbbrowne@acm.org)
Date: 03/30/02 

From: Christopher Browne <cbbrowne@acm.org>
Date: Sat, 30 Mar 2002 09:29:29 -0500

Centuries ago, Nostradamus foresaw when "Yan Seiner" <yan@hamlet.cardinal.lan> would write:
> OK, so this is a bit off-topic. What are the most common file extensions
> for carrying viruses? I'm checking tar, tgz, gz, zip, exe, and vbs. Any
> others out there that I should be checking?

I think you may have gone to the wrong newsgroup.

MS-DOS is an OS that has "file extensions." Windows has "file
extensions." OS/2 has "file extensions." So does VMS and MVS, as did
CP/M.

But Linux is a descendant of Unix, and has no such notion.

On Linux, file identifiers are not separated into a set of namespaces,
one of which is called an "extension."

And, more importantly, the contents of files have no forcible
association with any nonexistant "file extension."

If some nefarious individual is generating nefarious payloads, there
is no reason to expect any honesty in the management of naming
conventions. If you were concerned about analyzing the contents of
files to find "viruses," you'd be downright _stupid_ to believe that
file names had anything to do with anything. 

-- 
(reverse (concatenate 'string "gro.mca@" "enworbbc"))
http://www.ntlug.org/~cbbrowne/fs.html
"Other than that, Mrs. Lincoln, how was the play?"

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