Tuxissa

Tuxissa is a fictional computer virus made up by Humorix, a humor website on Linux. [cite web
url=http://humorix.org/articles/1999/03/tuxissa/
title=Humorix | Attack of the Tuxissa Virus
publisher=humorix.org
accessdate=2008-06-06]

Although the website states that all articles there are fake, [cite web
url=http://humorix.org/about/#Fake
title=Humorix | About Humorix
publisher=humorix.org
accessdate=2008-06-06]

anti-virus software makers such as Symantec and Sophos had pages for the Tuxissa hoax.

How it works (in theory)

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. Nilesh Murali

ee also

List of computer virus hoaxes

Footnotes

External links

* [http://www.symantec.com/avcenter/venc/data/tuxissa-hoax.html Symantec's security response to the virus]
* [http://www.sophos.com/virusinfo/hoaxes/tuxissa.html Sophos' virus info on Tuxissa]
* [http://humorix.org/articles/1999/03/tuxissa/ Humorix's article] , where the joke first started