Linus Torvalds made Linux kernel compatible with the virus

21st April 2006

The information about the omnivorous virus, published by "Kaspersky Labs", immediately drew attention of Linux community. One of the developers - Hans-Werner Khilze, carried out thorough analysis and revealed the reasons, for which the harmful code rejected to work in the systems on the base of Linux 2.6.16 and above kernel. As it proved to be, virus was powerless to the new versions of kernel because of the error in the manner of compiler GCC works with the specific registers of specific system calls. Khilze shared its discovery with Linus Torvald, who is not only confirmed the correctness of the drawn conclusions, but also wrote a patch to the kernel, which makes possible for virus to work also on the new versions of kernel. Simultaneously Torvalds indicated that the harmful program uses the obsolete system calls, already the long time ago in practice not utilized in the kernel works. And antiviral experts, and Linux developers concur in the opinion that the virus does not present serious danger and is only the demonstration of the possibility in principle of creating the harmful programs, compatible with several operating systems.