Torvalds creates patch for cross-platform virus
Linus Torvalds has had an opportunity to examine the testing and analysis by Hans-Werner Hilse which we reported on yesterday, and has blessed it as being correct. The reason that the virus is not propagating itself in the latest kernel versions is due to a bug in how GCC handles specific registers in a particular system call. He has coded a patch for the kernel to allow the virus to work on even the latest Linux kernel. That may sound terribly complex, so let's break it down. A system call is made when an application, in this case, the virus, wants the kernel to perform a task for it: perhaps to read some data, or write it to a file, or so on.
As part of the housekeeping done by an application before such a call, specific registers -- a register is a temporary storage address which can be accessed as fast as possible by the CPU -- are loaded with additional information required to perform whatever task the call is asking for.
