[Techtalk] Linux email viruses

[Mary]

On Wed, Jul 21, 2004, Carla Schroder wrote:
> Is it accurate to say 'there are no Linux email viruses/Trojan 
> horses/rootkits/backdoors/Trojan downloaders etc.' ?

Are there any in circulation that I know of? No. (I don't believe
they're impossible in principle, I'm happy to elaborate if asked, but
that wasn't the question so I won't rant here.)

Have there been in the past?

I don't know of any Linux specific viruses, there were claims in 2002 that
WINE is now good enough that Windows viruses are a risk for people using
WINE, although this was a bit controversial.

I don't know if you'd call this a "Linux virus" or not, but here are the
details:

Original article: http://articles.linuxguru.net/view/198 [doesn't seem
to be there anymore]

Copy of original article at January 2003:
http://web.archive.org/web/20030602125753/http://articles.linuxguru.net/view/198

linuxsecurity.com's post (with update/correction):
http://linuxsecurity.com/articles/vendors_products_article-6009.html

KDE Traffic discusses the article and how genuine it was:
http://www.kerneltraffic.org/kde/kde20021028_45.html#3

-Mary