Tuxissa is a fictional computer
virus hoax made up by Humorix, a humor website on Linux.
Although the website states that all articles there are fake,
[
] anti-virus software makers such as
Symantec Symantec may refer to:
*An American consumer software company now known as Gen Digital Inc.
*A brand of enterprise security software purchased by Broadcom Inc.
Broadcom Inc. is an American designer, developer, manufacturer and global supplier ...
,
Sophos
Sophos Group plc is a British based security software and hardware company. Sophos develops products for communication endpoint, encryption, network security, email security, mobile security and unified threat management. Sophos is primarily ...
and
F-Secure had pages for the Tuxissa
virus hoax.
Hoax
The virus is based on the
Melissa virus, with its aim to install
Linux onto the victim's computer without the owner's notice. It is spread via e-mail, contained within a message titled "Important Message About Windows Security". It first spreads the virus to other computers, then it downloads a stripped-down version of
Slackware, and uncompresses it onto the hard disk. The
Windows Registry is finally deleted, and the boot options changed. There the virus destroys itself when it reboots the computer at the end, with the user facing the Linux
login prompt.
See also
*
List of computer virus hoaxes
A computer virus hoax is a message warning the recipients of a non-existent computer virus threat. The message is usually a chain e-mail that tells the recipients to forward it to everyone they know, but it can also be in the form of a pop-up windo ...
Footnotes
External links
Symantec's security response to the virusHumorix's article
where the joke first started
F-Secure anti-virus software program's page about the Tuxissa virus
Virus hoaxes
Fictional computer viruses
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