Thursday, August 26, 2010

what is a renaming companion virus?

a renaming companion virus is a type of companion virus that uses the 'rename file' functionality of the operating system to assume the identity of the host program it infects.

a renaming companion virus will rename the host program it's infecting (often to something with the same name but a different file extension so that it's easy to find later) and then rename itself so that it has it's host's original name. this way, when people attempt to execute the host program they will be executing the virus instead and the virus can then locate the renamed host and execute it so that the user doesn't suspect anything is wrong.

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