Re: Are there any known viruses for the n900?
 

good question, does anyone know?

Re: Are there any known viruses for the n900?
 

Depends on what you mean by "virus". You can write a "malicious" program in any language, including Python. But that doesn't qualify it to be a virus.

Normally a virus has to infect programs by attaching itself to them, so that they can further infect other programs. Attaching a cross-platform python script to a random executable program is, I submit, not an easy task.

Re: Are there any known viruses for the n900?
 

It could attach itself to other python scripts, which would make it a cross-platform virus. Spreading to other computers would be more problematic though - you'd be relying on users running random python scripts they get mailed (though the equivalent seems to work fine on Windows users). Even then, a user could only infect any scripts they have write access to.

Re: Are there any known viruses for the n900?
 

Exactly. That is (or was) the most fundamental difference between Unix/Linux and Windows. You run as user, so only your files can be infected or damaged. In Windows you were (almost) always "administrator".

Now with UAC the situation is different, but there is still another fundamental difference: in Windows it's relatively easy to "get root" whereas in Linux it's not so easy (or at least not so widespread).

Plus in Windows you normally have a standard set of libraries and programs that the "virus" can use, but every Linux is different, so this makes it also harder (hmm, perhaps a debian virus would use apt-get, oh well.. :)

Re: Are there any known viruses for the n900?
 

If someone was intent on making a working cross platform Python virus, i would expect it should be just a matter of adding a few conditional switches to execute the different infection approaches depending on which system it is running on (and to give it a polish, check the effectiveness and try different approaches when the most commonly successful one for the system in question fails; and of course before the actual attack on the OS spread a bunch of modified and obfuscated copies as backup in case the original one gets caught)

Re: Are there any known viruses for the n900?
 

phone is stuck in u-boot and do not load and the battery is discharged. can someone help me? please. Thanks to

Re: Are there any known viruses for the n900?
 

charge it, flash it and sell it!
lol

Re: Are there any known viruses for the n900?
 

Did it work with u-boot before, or you just installed it and now it stuck? Maybe you wanted to boot from sd? If so do you have the intended system on the sd?

Re: Are there any known viruses for the n900?
 

Yes, but this still leaves you with the problem of getting your virus executed on the system.

Windows, and Windows programs, have a tendency to execute anything that looks like it could be executed (see autorun, Word macros, Outlook, IE, ...).

Linux, and linux programs, tend to execute only what is meant to be executed. Unfortunately with the Windows-ification of Linux (modern Linux'es seem to be only concentrated in imitating Windows features, including its flaws) it may well happen that a text editor might decide to execute a script ("it appears that you are editing a bash script, shall I execute it for you?"), not to mention "sophisticated" e-mail programs, etc.

In any case, going back to the thread title. A "virus" for the N900 would be very easy to make, especially in view of the number of people who install just about anything from extras-devel or even random .deb's they find.

Luckily Maemo is not a widespread platform, and most people around here are either nice guys or not competent enough to write a simple program. Which is a good thing in this case :)

Re: Are there any known viruses for the n900?
 

Don't tempt them!