Virus.PHP.Pirus

Parent class: VirWare

Viruses and worms are malicious programs that self-replicate on computers or via computer networks without the user being aware; each subsequent copy of such malicious programs is also able to self-replicate. Malicious programs which spread via networks or infect remote machines when commanded to do so by the “owner” (e.g. Backdoors) or programs that create multiple copies that are unable to self-replicate are not part of the Viruses and Worms subclass. The main characteristic used to determine whether or not a program is classified as a separate behaviour within the Viruses and Worms subclass is how the program propagates (i.e. how the malicious program spreads copies of itself via local or network resources.) Most known worms are spread as files sent as email attachments, via a link to a web or FTP resource, via a link sent in an ICQ or IRC message, via P2P file sharing networks etc. Some worms spread as network packets; these directly penetrate the computer memory, and the worm code is then activated. Worms use the following techniques to penetrate remote computers and launch copies of themselves: social engineering (for example, an email message suggesting the user opens an attached file), exploiting network configuration errors (such as copying to a fully accessible disk), and exploiting loopholes in operating system and application security. Viruses can be divided in accordance with the method used to infect a computer:

• file viruses
• boot sector viruses
• macro viruses
• script viruses

Any program within this subclass can have additional Trojan functions. It should also be noted that many worms use more than one method in order to spread copies via networks.

Class: Virus

Viruses replicate on the resources of the local machine. Unlike worms, viruses do not use network services to propagate or penetrate other computers. A copy of a virus will reach remote computers only if the infected object is, for some reason unrelated to the virus function, activated on another computer. For example: when infecting accessible disks, a virus penetrates a file located on a network resource a virus copies itself to a removable storage device or infects a file on a removable device a user sends an email with an infected attachment.

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Platform: PHP

No platform description

Description

Technical Details

This is the first known virus infecting PHP script programs (Hypertext Preprocessor scripting language, see http://www.php.net for more details). It was discovered in October 2000.

When the virus is activated, it looks for all .PHP and .HTM files in current directory and infects them. The infection is done in quite silly way. The virus does not write its complete code to the file, but just a reference to the virus file: the virus adds one command to the end of the file, and that is "include virus file" command that refers to virus code.

When an affected file is opened, the PHP scripting machine processes that "include" command as well, gets (reads) complete virus code from virus file and activates it.

As a result, the virus copy presents on the computer in just one instance. All infected files just refers to that copy. Because of that infection way the virus cannot spread from a computer to other computers, but is able to operate inside one computer only.

The virus contains the text "pirus.php".

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