Podloso: world's lamest virus?

Stephen Withers
Friday, 06 April 2007 03:09

Business IT - Security

Kaspersky Lab claims to have discovered the first iPod virus, which it has has named Podloso.

Described as a "typical proof of concept virus", Podloso targets - if that's not too strong a word - iPods running Linux. How many iPods run anything other than Apple's standard software? One in a thousand? One in ten thousand?

Podloso must be deliberately installed and run by the user (so it's probably a Trojan rather than a virus, but what's in a name?), and then it alters all the executable .elf files it can find so when they are run they display a message on the screen which says "You are infected with Oslo the first iPodLinux Virus".

"Podloso has no malicious payload, and does not present a real threat; it simply demonstrates that it is, theoretically possible to create malicious programs for such devices," said Kaspersky officials.

So someone has written a program that can modify files - should we be impressed? The downside is that claims like Kaspersky's are likely to renew calls for iPods to be banned from workplaces because of some vague security risk.