Virus threatens PCs running Linux or Windows
Hackers have released a sample code for a virus that could infect both Linux and Windows PCs. The virus, which was given the double name Virus.Linux.Bi.a/ Virus.Win32.Bi.a, was reported Friday by security firm Kaspersky Lab. Security researchers worry that the malicious code may be part of a disturbing new trend of viruses that can run on Windows, as well as other operating systems that have been largely ignored by hackers.
"The virus is written in assembler and is relatively simple," Kaspersky wrote in a posting to the company's Viruslist.com Web site. "However, it is interesting in that it is capable of infecting the different file formats used by Linux and Windows - ELF and PE format files respectively." The ELF (Executable and Linking Format) and PE (Portable Executable) file formats are used to format certain types of binary files in Linux and Windows, including the .exe and .dll files used in Windows.
