Alert - New Photo Virus
 

Perrun is the first to be able to cross from infecting a program to infecting data files.

Once run, the file installs a program onto the victim's hard drive that can infect pictures. When a computer user clicks on a picture file with the extension .JPG, the picture is infected before it appears. Because the picture displays normally the victim may not know there's anything wrong.

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.

http://www.cnn.com/2002/TECH/interne....ap/index.html

thats not as scary as it sounds..

i once was infected with a trojan that did the same thing - it would open itself whenever a exe was opened because the trojan added some stuff to the registry telling it to launch the program when a exe is loaded.

all this virus does is replace exe with jpg (perhaps making it less dangerous)

by sending a "infected" jpg to another person, nothing will happen unless they opened the original exe which adds stuff to the registry

This is all simply a case of media hype & people not reading between the lines, or having the ability to.