Creating a virus for a modern Linux system
Head Cold!
© Lead Image © piren, 123RF.com
Linux might be safer than Windows, but it is not as safe as you think. We'll show you how a virus can navigate through the formidable Linux security system to deliver a payload.
Halfway through the wild '90s, I found myself in a peculiarly unpleasant situation: A significant amount of disk space from my hard disk had disappeared into the void, seemingly chewed, swallowed, and digested by an unknown entity (and please note: Disk space those days was measured in precious megabytes). Application loading time had almost doubled, and worst of all, all the friends I shared games, programs, and jokes with had experienced the same symptoms. Now, looking back with all of my accumulated experience and knowledge from the past 30 years, I can see that these symptoms indicated a serious virus infestation of the local Novell network.
My friends and I were a technical bunch, hardened with some years of low-level programming knowledge. After spending several sleepless nights, we identified the root cause of the problems: a nasty, but thankfully non-destructive, virus that somehow crept into the local network – possibly copied over from a seemingly innocent game we thought was safe. We called the virus the Porcupine, because deep inside several layers of encryption and assembly level obfuscation was a very cryptic message:
For cryin'out loud! My circuits are haunted by the ghost of a porcupine...
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