Proper use of English could get a virus past security

Hackers could evade most existing antivirus protection by hiding malicious code within ordinary text, according to security researchers.

One of the most common ways of hijacking other people's computers is to use "code-injection" attacks, in which malicious computer code is delivered to and then run on victims' machines. Current security measures work on the assumption that the code used has a different structure to plain text such as English prose.

Now a team of researchers has highlighted a potential future theatre in the virus-security arms race by working out how to hide malware within English-language sentences.