Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!apple!usc!polyslo!vlsi3b15!vax1.cc.lehigh.edu!ubu.cc.lehigh.edu!virus-l From: Acrc014@UNLCDC3 Newsgroups: comp.virus Subject: virus spreading modes Message-ID: <0003.8906201731.AA26692@spot.CC.Lehigh.EDU> Date: 17 Jun 89 16:50:06 GMT Sender: Virus Discussion List Reply-To: VIRUS-L@IBM1.CC.Lehigh.EDU Lines: 20 Approved: virus-l@ubu.cc.lehigh.edu This is my first posting on VIRUS-L and these are some of my scattered thoughts. They may have been discusses before, but I have not read all of the back issues as of yet. The Trojan horse approach can be triggered by dates. Has there ever been one that activated by finding a seperate program. An example of this would be a GIF shower triggered by a certain GIF picture. Has there ever been code written so that the same effect (harmful or not) appeared on more then one type of machine (I know it would take different programs). There has been discussion of hos >[Dw a software company would "never" write a virus to be activated by a competitor's program. This I agree with, but with the reservation that an individual might try and duplicate the effect. If they were ambitious and knowledgable, they could try and do it on a program that had become popular enough to spread across machine boundaries. On the issue of legality, how vulnerable are the people who put up technical information about bugs in systems. A hacker (virus writer) might by hard to find and prosecute. But if a virus is based on such information, the source author would be east to find (easy to find).