I have been sorting out several machines for a client; an office that uses a mixture of machines running Windows XP, Ubuntu and MintLinux. The Windows machines work in an intranet that has no connexion to the internet or to the other intranet consisting of the Linux boxes that are connected to the internet.
One job I had to do was to take 2 hard disks out of a Pentium 4 running XP and pop them into a faster machine. However the machine was running slowly and behaving queerly; so, although it has not direct contact with the internet I thought "just for fun" I would run some anti-virus stuff on it. I downloaded Emsisoft because it allows one a 3 day full-featured trial. It is extremely impressive insofar as it does a job which I don't believe should be necessary on any operating system in an efficient manner. Well my "just for fun" very rapidly became "egg all over the face" when it became clear that the Windows machines were infected with an even dozen of "nasties"; the most ugly being Trojan.Win32.FakeAV!IK and Trojan-Downloader.Agent!IK The only way I can account for these computers having become infected is through workers in this office transferring infected MSWord and MSExcel files from the Linux boxes to the Windows ones with USB Flash drives. The only other possibility is that the staff are being 'disingenuous', and have also been using their Flash drives on computers running Windows at home or elsewhere. --------------------------------------------------------------- As an essentially Non-Windows person (and my recent finding only serves to make me even more 'Non' than I was before) I should be very grateful if somebody who knows more about this than I do (well, that shouldn't be difficult) could tell me: 1. Can virusus / trojans attach themselves to MSWord / Excel documents? 2. Can viruses be downloaded simultaneously as documents onto USB sticks plugged into Linux boxes that then infect Windows boxes on transfer? sincerely, Richmond Mathewson _______________________________________________ use-revolution mailing list use-revolution@lists.runrev.com Please visit this url to subscribe, unsubscribe and manage your subscription preferences: http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/use-revolution