UTF-8 text file infected?

kpachopoulos · 01-12-2006, 02:26 PM

I don't know anything about viruses. I tried to upload/attach the file "erga-hostap" -and another one- to yahoo.gr, in order to send it via e-mail and i got a "file infected".

About the erga-hostap:

Code:

[kostas@polideukis kostas]# file Desktop/erga-hostap
Desktop/erga-hostap: UTF-8 Unicode English text, with very long lines

About the erga-the 2nd file:

Code:

[kostas@polideukis kostas]# file Desktop/erga
Desktop/erga: ASCII English text, with very long lines

Any ideas? Thanks

foo_bar_foo · 01-12-2006, 07:37 PM

the only way a file like that can become a virus is if it contains MACROS specific to a certian program like most notably MS word or something than exploits some buffer overrun MS bad programming crap and these might exist only in certain MS formats like .doc i don't know. otherwise no problem -- just a string of chars. never heard of plain text infecting anything.

thats not to say there are not holes in the yahoo upload buffers that can be exploited but it soulds like just crappy upload code spitting out bogus error to me.

that is unless you sent it an exploit