All it does is provide those who would knock Apple, and writers about security such as myself, with something to talk about. After all, there is no mechanism for the virus to spread because it has to be saved into iPod memory in order to infect the device, it cannot jump from one player to another and cannot be distributed piggy-backed to an audio download for example. Although there is an argument to say that this is just the beginning of the iPod virus invasion, and the lack of a malicious payload this time does not mean the next one will be harmless, I am inclined to think otherwise. So if it is relatively difficult to become infected in the first place, requires more than a little user interaction, and has a relatively harmless payload is Podloso a cause for concern? Now that is not such a straightforward question to answer. Finally, if the user does execute the Podloso file it will then scan the iPod hard drive and infect all ELF (executable and linking) files which it finds.Īnd the payload? Well, an infected executable will fail to run and instead launch a message display box which says “You are infected with Oslo the first iPodLinux Virus.” Even if this requirement is fulfilled, the virus still requires user involvement to be launched from the program demo folder. For a start it requires a Linux installation, not on your PC but on the iPod itself which rather limits the number of devices likely to be capable of infection. Like all proof of concept viruses though, Podloso poses no real world threat to users. Leading security vendor Kaspersky Lab has uncovered the first ever proof of concept virus designed with the sole intention of infecting the iPod media player.
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