This is absolutely the worst article I've ever read on Wired News. It's an AP wire about "Perrun," a virus that infects JPEGs. Now, I'm guessing that there is a specific app (MSIE?) that is vulnerable to a buffer overrun (presumably, that's the "rrun" in "Perrun") that can be invoked with deliberately broken JPEGs. OK, I buy that. But that's not about JPEGs, that's about some specific app with a specific vulnerability.
The article makes no mention of this. Instead, it hysterically claims that "Perrun inserts portions of the virus code into the picture file. When the picture is viewed, it can infect other pictures. If the author wished, the virus could delete files on the computer or perform other mischief," and goes on to say "That evolution should make computer users think twice about sending pictures or any other media over the Internet."
The sky is falling! There is a specific vulnerability in some (unnamed) app! But we can be more interesting if we imply that JPEGs are considered harmful!
The howlers just go on and on: "it is the first to be able to cross from infecting a program to infecting data files, long considered safe from such threats." Well, except for infectious MS Office files, of which there are millions. MSFT (and some other vendors) have been mingling code and data for years now, with predictably disastrous results.
Whoever pulled this story off the wire and put it up on Wired News was asleep at the switch. This isn't reporting, it's hysterical fluff. The stringer should be reassigned to covering razor-blades-in-Hallowe'en-apples scares and never allowed near a technology story again.
