RIAA virus?

[MrLinus]

Not picking on Ms. M. - I just see so much of this mis-naming/identifying of these threats that I finally got fed up....

I wouldn't view it as picking on.. It's always good to get clarification.

The payload in the case of the "classic" virus is the generation of new email to all the email addresses it can harvest from the new victim which contain a new copy of itself.

I'm curious as to what is "classic" since virus have been around for a while and using email as an attack vector/propogation is a relatively new thing ("I Love You" was the first, no? This would place it around 2000 and yet, virus have been around since the 70s (one site I found suggests that Elk Cloner was the first wild virus -- circa 1981).

Perhaps the "neo-classical" virus use email as it's form of propogation?

[Tiger Shark]

Perhaps the "neo-classical" virus use email as it's form of propogation?

Ok.. I can live with that... It's more a thing that most people today see the email vector as the most prevalent and many don't remember floppy disks....

[MrLinus]

It's more a thing that most people today see the email vector as the most prevalent and many don't remember floppy disks....

I do. I still use them and in fact, still have a 3Com diagnostic disk that has the NATAS MBR virus on it (nasty beastie).

[Tiger Shark]

LOL... I never saw you as that old my dear...

Yes, they are still used, and somewhere at home I have a collection of stuff like Stoned etc. but they probably don't work any more.... I just dread to think how many years ago the last Boot sector infector was written and released into the wild.... It's propagation rate would be worse than snail mail...

[Kite]

Virus, worm, trojan, whatever. I dont want one on my computer in any case.