A computer virus that can infect PCs running either the ubiquitous Windows operating system or the increasingly popular Linux operating system has emerged.
The virus, dubbed "W32.Winux" by the company that first reported it, anti-virus firm Central Command, is not destructive and does not appear to have infected any computers yet.
Still, the virus sets a disturbing precedent."We didn't think this was possible," said Keith Peer, president and chief executive of Medina, Ohio-based Central Command. "It's a real step forward for virus writers."
Another anti-virus maker, McAfee.com, said it had not seen the virus and could not confirm reports of W32.Winux. W32.Winux spreads by infecting executable programs that run either on later versions of Windows from Microsoft - including 95, 98, Me, NT and 2000 - or the various flavours of Linux, a free operating system that is gaining ground among techies and businesses.
Users can set off the dormant virus by either double-clicking on an infected program or email attachment. After it is activated, the virus automatically searches for all nearby Windows or Linux applications of at least 100Kb in size, which it then proceeds to infect.
Central Command, which first received the virus via an anonymous email originating in the Czech Republic early Tuesday afternoon, said a virus writer named Benny claiming affiliation to a known group of virus writers called 29A, appears to be the culprit.
Benny and 29A have been implicated as being behind a number of other previous viruses that have been considered technically innovative but not particularly destructive.
In late 1999, a virus that masqueraded as a fix for the Millennium Bug made its way around the Internet. The 29A group claimed credit for that virus, as well as another one emerging last September called "Stream," which experts said was particularly clever at disguising itself from anti-virus software.
The W32.Winux virus is written in a primitive computer language called "assembly language," which is what allows it to infect either Windows or Linux programs, Peer said.
With Linux's growing popularity, an increasing number of PC users are installing both Windows and Linux on the same computer. Despite its ability to jump between different operating systems, W32.Winux is not a fast-spreading virus.
For one, Peer said that the virus appears to be limited to spreading only on PCs running Intel Pentium processors - meaning it could not spread to Sun Microsystems servers running Linux.
And unlike more recent worm-type viruses like Melissa or Love Letter, W32.Winux cannot automatically email itself to other Internet users worldwide. "It's rather old-fashioned in that way," Peer said.
While there are thousands of viruses swimming around on Windows computers worldwide, there are relatively few for Linux - it is estimated that there are less than 50, Peer said, which he attributed to the lack of virus writers targeting the Linux operating system.
Central Command says it has developed a cure for the virus at its Web site.
