Is a picture worth a thousand worms ?

A number of web sites these days offer free downloads of celebrities and your favourite singers, actors and even football players. Infact many reputed sites display on their opening pages a list of pictures that are frequently searched. Its not surprising then Natalie Portman or Jessica Lynch figure way up there among searches for photos for Neverland Ranch. It really does not matter where these pictures came from for the ardent pic-hunter.

Then I came across the recent news article on how pictures of the Yugoslavian leader Slobodan Milosevic - who recently died in his cell - posted on a website contained Trojans. It then dawned on me then the kind of havoc I could possibly make if I had a slightly evil bent of mind. All that was required was for me to work on to creating my own site work on it to make it popular enough on the search engines when people searched for a site that provided Free pictures. Nothing that I mentioned so far is unrealistic or unachievable. Search the web and it should not be difficult to find an appropriate tool to author and modify a existing picture to include a malicious script. I am just one step away from putting into practice my diabolic plan. All that’s required is to put it on my frequently visited web site and wait for the kill.

If not today, if not tomorrow surely someday a unsuspecting person is going to click on the picture on my site and Voila! The rest could well be history for this visitor. A mail that claimed that Milosevic did not die and was murdered would have done enough to evince enough interest to get readers to such a malicious site. Which ever the modus operandi, the end is predictably the same.

It will cost you a lot of money and probably I would have stolen much of your personal information to cause you enough damage. So before you download that next picture of Posh Spice or Princess Diana ask yourself Is a picture worth a thousand worms??

Is Reverse Crossover a Possibility??

The article on the Crossover virus interested me a lot. The very concept of a virus being able to hop across from a PC to a mobile device and the possibility of the havoc such a crossover could do left me wondering for a long time.

When I searched the web for the types of mobile phone viruses prevelant, it dawned on me that such crossover viruses are merely trendsetters which start of quite innocently for now but in time to come will go on to create havoc in the telecom and network industry.

Considering that in the US only 35% use a broadband connection to get on the net and in Europe about 60%, the number of people using dialups was significantly high to be ignored. What percentage of these used mobile phones to connect up their latest Laptops to the Internet I do not know but surely the jet setting executives must.

What are the chances of a crossover reversal-taking place? Although it is more of a concept for now, it isn’t difficult to stretch one imagination a bit further to see this happening. And what would happen then? An executive who has crossed over the Atlantic to get to a business meeting will find his Laptop CRASH!! just the night before the meeting – The reason he connected to the internet using his mobile phone and a virus crept in.

While there are no sure shot ways of stopping a virus attack, disciplining yourself to not use a mobile phone to connect your PC to the Internet can reduce the risk greatly.