What file types can carry viruses?

[colttaylor]

I'm rebuilding a seriously virus-damaged machine which may or may not still be infected. Unfortunately, it no longer runs well enough to use any anti-virus software on it.
I'm going to replace the harddrive and reinstall the operating system, then add anti-virus and anti-spyware software and finally, add the old harddrive as a non-booting slave drive. I want to copy some of the files to the new drive, but want to be very selective so that I do not contaminate the new system.
My question is...
Which of the following file types can carry viruses?

MP3
AVI
MOV
MPG/MPEG
JPG/JPEG
GIF
BMP

Thanks in advance for any help you can provide!
Colt Taylor

 

[AVChap]

If you're going to be installing AV and spyware scanning programs, it won't matter what type of files you transfer. Just make sure that the AV is updated. It should detect virus-infected files as you transfer from the slave to the master drive.

HTH,
AVChap
... take my advice, I don't use it anyway!

 

[yizhar]

HI.

The files you mentioned can not be infected (as far as I know), but some virusses use double extension to make the file look like it has a different extension, like:
filename.jpg.vbs

Anyway it is suggested to scan all files on the original disk (slave), and then as mentioned in previous post you are safe.

Bye
Yizhar Hurwitz

http://come.to/yizhar

http://teachers.sivan.co.il/yizhar

 

[colttaylor]

Thanks to both of you.
The machine restoration is going well
and thanks to your advice, I am confident
that the new machine is virus free.
Thanks,
Colt.

 

[chaosinc]

they are both right.
but you can get trojans from pretty much anything you open.
if some worm or virus or what ever is roped to the original file and they progged the invader in the right laguage then you can get it. but i am not trying to paranoi you, just letting you know what could happen, but not many people are able to do what i said. no worries mate


that is what i believe to be correct.
if it is not, let me know so, i can expand my brain power

 

[Grenage]

I've not seen a Virus transmitted on anything other than an executable or script, and I assumed it could not be done on a static file such as MP3 etc. I could of course be wrong.

Generally watch out for exe, bat, HTML, Javascript etc etc.

 

[2ffat]

There was a proof of concept that JPEG files could carry viruses but only if other unlikely conditions already existed. See

http://www.us.sophos.com/virusinfo/articles/perrun.html.

James P. Cottingham

When a man sits with a pretty girl for an hour, it seems like a minute. But let him sit on a hot stove for a minute and it's longer than any hour. That's relativity.
[tab][tab]Albert Einstein explaining his Theory of Relativity to a group of journalists.

 

[colttaylor]

Thanks to all!
Great responses all around!
The JPG comments were new information to
me and especially appreciated.
The funny part of this project is that
although I finished the rebuild several
days ago, my nephew (who uses the machine)
immediately installed Kazaa (a peer-to-peer
file sharing program) and went web-surfing.
Within hours there were 5 spyware programs,
banner-ad changers and otherwise uninvited
utilities running on the system!
Anyone know how to cure irresponsible
computer user syndrome?

 

[Grenage]

Find the answer and your'll be a richer than gates