just a quick question concerning viruses in the world of linux.

from what i understand, viruses are not anywhere near the problem in linux that they are in windows, because of file permissions, etc. my question is this. yesterday, i received an e-mail with an attachment that i just found out today (through a cnn article--http://www.cnn.com/2003/TECH/internet/08/02/worm/index.html) is a worm called "worm/MiMail.A". anyway, it was quite obviously not a legitimate message, so i didn't open the attachment. my question is, what if i had? i was running mandrake 9.1 at the time, which i dual boot with xp. could it have possibly gotten into my windows partition and started messing things up in there? could it still have positioned itself in linux in such a way that i would spread it on to other people?

just trying to get a better hold on exactly what the virus situation is in linux. thanks a lot for any info.

I would doubt it. Since it was compiled for windows you would need to run it under wine or soemthing for it even to execute properly.

you cannot execute windows binary under linux if you could them less people will complain about their favorite progs not working under linux

Just delete a bunch of usefull files and mail it to 10 of your friends.