World’s first ‘Vista’ virus
p2pnet.net News:- Bill and the Boyz will be interested to learn an Austrian virus writer has published five simple viruses targeting Microsoft MSH.
“ These proof-of-concept viruses will never became a real-world problem, but the case is interesting historically, as these are the first viruses for a totally new platform,” says F-Secure’s research director Mikko Hypponen.
MSH, or Microsoft Command Shell, is a command line interface and scripting language that’s basically a replacement for shells such as CMD.EXE, COMMAND.COM or 4NT.EXE and which will ship in 2006, says Hypponen.
“As a command-line front end, MSH resembles many Unix shells quite a bit,” he says, going on:
“As MSH (codenamed ‘Monad’) was scheduled to ship as the default shell for Windows Vista (which went to first beta last week), you could argue that these are the first viruses for Windows Vista. However, it has lately been rumoured that MSH might not ship with Vista at all – instead might be part of Microsoft Exchange 2006 or something. We won’t know for sure until later.”
Last year Symantec researcher Eric Chien predicted the appearance of MSH viruses.
His The return of script viruses – an overview of Microsoft Shell came at the Virus Bulletin 2004 conference and concluded: "While Microsoft Shell is still in development, the current versions have enough functionality to allow a variety of malicious threats including file-infecting viruses," adds Hypponen.
Something you think we should know? tips[at]p2pnet.net
See:-
F-Secure – First "Vista Virus" found, August 5, 2005
August 5th, 2005 at 2:47 pm
Wow, a virus BEFORE the software is even released!
Now, that’s what I call fast service!
August 5th, 2005 at 8:56 pm
Those that are awaiting the new release of Vista can already see the future coming. It may not be these virus scripts. The virus scripts are not really that damaging. They are only proof of concept not the real deal. You can be assured that the true virus writers will be up to the task of continuing to make your life miserable in the line of Windoze products. Go ahead and get ready to shuck out for new firewalls, anti-virus, anti-soyware, anti-trojan, and anti-everything. The philosphy that Microsucks deals with requires it on a regular basis.
Me? I don’t worry about it. I’m on linux.
August 5th, 2005 at 9:15 pm
well.. there goes the SINGLE BENEFIT they were touting in return for you accepting a completely locked down and fritz chipped system.
Their new slogan should be “we stand in awe of your potential, but refuse to let you realize it because it may hurt the profit margins of our partners”
August 5th, 2005 at 10:07 pm
That was a funny insider joke …. “anti-soyware, anti-trojan”
The posters on p2pnet.net are witty!
August 6th, 2005 at 5:23 am
I’m no more a fan of DRM than the next guy (as long as he hates the idea that is!) but i think we need to remember one important thing about this whole “DRM in the OS + Hardware thing”.
It’s being written by MS.
So it’s probably not going to be any more effective/usable/useful than anything else they’ve ever written. It always seems to take them 3 versions or 2 service packs to get it to where it should have been for the first release.
I won’t be bothering with it, but i’m sure i’ll have a whole lot of fun watching ppl who have bought it TRY and use it. Not to mention the temper tantrums of the “content owners” WHEN it all gets cracked wide open within a few days of release.
August 7th, 2005 at 5:57 pm
Wow you can right a virus in any shell program? That would include unix what a bunch o morons
August 7th, 2005 at 5:58 pm
last time I checked you can write a virus any any shell program… O call unix quick