Is this true?

[Leaderz0rz]

I heard from a few people that there is a new virus that is embedded into an image called "ann.jpg" I wasn't told what it does to your system or how it works, just that by opening the image, it will infect your machine, it could just be a rumor, but if anyone else has heard of it, I would like to know.

 

[cpugeniusmv]

a quick search at http://www.sarc.com for "ann.jpg" returned no results...so i don't know if that virus really exists or not...

as for a jpeg with malicious code? the only way a "jpg file" could launch malicious code is if it was actually:

whatever.jpg.exe or whatever.jpg.vbs or something similar...

there's no way to make an actual malicious jpeg file to my knowledge.

 

[G|ass]

There are lots of viruses you can get by visiting www.whatever.com/picture.jpg but the virus has nothing to do with the JPG. The virus is embedded in the webpage you open when clicking thru to the link, and most of them are some variant of the WMP hijacker. It is IMPOSSIBLE to get a virus from an actual standalone JPG file. Idiots who have file extensions hidden will often think they were infected by a JPG when in fact it was a virus.jpg.exe file.

 

[LeeJend]

There was a vulnerability discovered in media players that allowed a virus to launch out of a media file. I think it was Real Player. They fixed the vulnerability and have an update available so the answer is:

Who cares if it's real or a hoax. Keep your programs and anti-virus up to date and you don't have to worry about it.

 

[Enyo]

No, infection just by opening a *standard* image file is not something you need to worry about.

A virus using a image would be nothing new but it would be a malformed image executing code in a web page or a double extension virus (not really a image) that would cause the infection.

The image itself would not be the virus but it is possible its something like Trojan.fgt which uses a malformed image and a exploit, to be infected by it all you would need to do is open the images URL in your browser.

http://sarc.com/avcenter/venc/data/irc.trojan.fgt.html (the one that exploits WMP)

 

[Leaderz0rz]

all I wanted to know, thanks ;D