[ale] McAfee Discovers First Linux Virus [clari.tw.comp

[Jacob Langseth]

} Personally I think Mcafee created the virus.  Antivirus software

Mcafee did NOT create the virus... what happened was someone posted to
linux-security about bliss being on their system.  Someone else followed
up w/ excerpts from the original usenet posting that contained an alpha
release of the bliss binary.  Someone else, who was apparently friends w/
someone @ Mcafee, passed the binary on to Mcafee (all this went on over
linux-security, btw).  The next day Mcafee had a press release claiming to
have 'discovered' the virus, which is just BS 'cause it had already been 
posted to usenet and linux-security.

The author later stated that he wrote Bliss to debunk those still claiming
that virii cannot exist under unix (though there have been several --
Thompson's cc/login trojan from Bell Labs, RT Morris's internet worm, and
one in Ludwig's Giant Black Book of Computer Viruses), and posted a binary
of the current version (bits fipped, of course).  The 'virus' is not
linux-specific, btw (though I think it's probably limited to systems w/
ELF format binaries).

-- 
^JwL < /dev/urand > /dev/kbd:  Boneless fish don't eat ice cream.

Jacob Langseth  <langseth at cc.gatech.edu>