Thursday, August 04, 2005

First Windows Vista Virus

Virus authors have produced proof of concept viruses targeting the scripting language behind prototype versions of Microsoft Windows Vista. An Austrian virus writer published five sample viruses that target Microsoft Command Shell (MSH) in a virus-writing magazine.
As MSH (codenamed 'Monad') is due to ship as the default shell for Windows Vista, these five pieces of malware can be classified as the first viruses for Windows Vista. However, there is still plenty of time for Microsoft to reconsider shipping MSH with Windows Vista. It is about a year ago since the concept of viruses for MSH was discussed by anti-virus researcher Eric Chien of Symantec at the Virus Bulletin conference. It is also understood that the MSH environment would provide virus writers far more powerful features than they ever could get with VBScript. So will this be the next big thing for viruswriters or not?