Fractal Viruses
by
A few months ago we received a request to host in the MFreeZone Section of MWM a few images. The title of the e-mail was "Fractal Viruses" and the e-mail and references were written in Spanish. We initially thought that we were dealing with a catch name associated with some method of creating new images, but on further investigation we discovered that we were being asked to promote viral activities. This is something we will never do.
Fractal Viruses are viruses which target JPEG files. Being a virus, this code hides within EXE files and propagates from one system to another by infecting files. When they trigger, these alter JPEG files as shown in the two pictures below.
"The JPEG file itself does not contain any viral code"
Being a virus, this code does not ask permission to infect a file and considering that practically all high resolution pictures on the net are stored as JPEG, such viral code can bring havoc. Although this is not the first example of virus code that targets non-executable files (other than boot records and partition tables) you should update your anti-virus software.
There are sites on the net that try to promote this type of code as being "friendly" viruses. Phrases such as wonderful, alive, let them live, etc try to soften the true nature of this code. Imagine explaining this to someone who has just spent a couple of days creating a JPEG image to have a wondrous program destroy it.
This program has all the ingredients to classify it under virus:
It attaches to program files and attempts to propagate from one computer to another without the user's consent.
It alters files on the host computer without the user's permission.
The actions of the code are not desired.
In many countries, transmitting, writing (or encouraging the writing by third parties) of viral code is a crime. Those who try to convince us about the beauty of such destructive code should invest in a drawing program such as Corel or Micrografx Designer. We took the first image, loaded into Corel and applied Kai's Fractal Explorer V2.0 to it. The result is the image on the right. Nice effect without the hidden (and unwanted part).
"Fractal Viruses are fully blown virus programs!"
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