What started out as a prank posting to comp.os.linux.advocacy yesterday has
turned into one of the most significant viruses in computing history.
The creator of the virus, who goes by the moniker "Anonymous Longhair",
modified the Melissa virus to install Linux on infected machines.
"It's a work of art," one Linux advocate told Humorix after he looked
through the Tuxissa virus source code. "This virus goes well beyond the
feeble troublemaking of Melissa. It actually configures a UMSDOS partition
on the user's hard drive and then downloads and installs a stripped-down
version of Slackware Linux."
The email message that the virus is attached to has the subject "Important
Message About Windows Security". The text of the body says, "I want to let
you know about some security problems I've uncovered in Windows 95/98/NT,
Office 95/97, and Outlook. It's critically important that you protect your
system against these attacks. Visit these sites for more information..."
The rest of the message contains 42 links to sites about Linux and free
software.
Details on how the virus started are a bit sketchy. The "Anonymous
Longhair" who created it only posted it to Usenet as an early April Fool's
gag, demonstrating how easy it would be to mount a "Linux revolution".