If a virus can be written in perl ... can it exicute in any of these Linux OS?

Question

Suse
Fedora Core 5
Debian
Ubuntu
Mandriva
Slackware
Mepis
Gentoo
Knoppix

Usually installed by default

I spelled "execute" wrong lol

Answer 1

I just upgraded my Ubuntu to the 64bit 7.04 version a few days ago (so I could have the fun of trying to get 32bit functionality with 64bit - hummmm). Anyway I looked into synaptic to see what perl was installed (this is pretty much a stock install as regards to perl).

I found version 5.8.8-7build1 of perl and perl-base as well as perl-modules, and numerous perl-interfaces to other components. Again, I have no interest in perl as such, and did not install them - they were put there as part of the standard installation.

Will a skilled programmer be able to write something in perl to cause damage? You have to ask a skilled perl programmer. I don't run as root, I rely on sudo - like a good "Ubuntuii". I suspect if someone wrote something and convinced me to run it, I could lose a lot of data - but I would have to be convinced to run "it" first.

I am not convinced that all of the other responders are correct in what they say - and not necessarily in reference to perl.

Answer 2

2

Answer 3

It'll be able to execute if Perl is installed (which it typically would be) but whether it'd be able to actually do anything is another matter.

If the virus gets run as root then it can trash the system pretty well and do anything root can (which is anything) although run as a normal user the virus could only wipe out that users files and infect files that user has access to (on a competently administered system the worst case would be that user losing their files, if there is a security hole in a program that allows for privilege escalation then the virus could exploit that to get root from a normal user account but a competent admin will have updated to a fixed version before such a virus got into the wild).

Automatically executing programs under anything that credibly pretends to be secure is a big no no and is not something that tends to happen in the Linux world so to start it someone will actually have to run it (and they'll have to chmod the file executable first before they can run it).

Answer 4

Perl is a server-side script, which executes on the server it resides on, not on your computer (which you probably knew). This means that if you execute a virus, it will infect your server, not the computer viewing the page. However, you can use perl to get IP addresses and other information about the computer, but im pretty sure you can't write something to somebnodies computer, unless you send the IP address accross to another program, written in another language, to do something to somebodies computer. Perl can be used as spyware though, by use of cookies.

Only exception is norton antivirus found virus called perl virus
Code of this virus is given at this forum:-
http://www.rohitab.com/discuss/lofiversion/index.php/t839.html

It can only infect computers which have perl installed on them, and to do that, you'd have to move it around yourself. This means it wont work on a webpage, but if it gets onto a floppy disk, and somebody executes on their computer without looking at the source first, they would get their perl files messed up (a form of virus attack).

Answer 5

there is not much of anything that can put a virus on linux maybe a freespire system I had one of them go bad but it took a long time to happen
any of the ones you mention are very strong and secure

Answer 6

Since when does *nix variants come with built-in Perl interpreters? The answer is "no".