Virus

I haven't heard of a virus that is purely in an image file, but something you see is PHOTO.GIF.VBS, where a name of an image file (with the extension) is ended by the actual virus file extension.
The Anna Kournikova virus from a couple of years agois the perfect example. It was a VB script file, but it was called Anna_Kournikova.JPG.vbs

People just got an e-mail saying it was a hot picture of Anna Kournikova attached to the e-mail, and if they did not look closely enough, they only noticeda file name of Anna_Kournikova.JPG

But the file really had a .VBS file extension, and that would let it run when double-clicked!

Also, it is possible for Outlook and other e-mail programs to not display the entire name of the file, if it is too long. It would cut off from the display the ending extension of the file. So in the e-mail, the file name looked something like Anna_Kournikova.JPG....
Sure, it still was a .VBS file, but the long name display compression was on, so you only had those .... at the end.

You gotta be careful out there!

hope this helps

a virus can be attached to a jpeg or gif and it can be renamed and when the user opens the file thinking it to be an image file (image files are usually opened in IE) they get executed and so u get them on to ur system.

Sorry as the situation is, the only way to know for sure, regardless of what a file is called, or what (if any depending on OS) extension it has, is to have an up-to-date virus scanner installed centrally (on mail servers) and on local machines. Some firewalls also can scan for virii as well.

Not to say you require a pricey model, there are decent free versions, but by having a paid version you can be reasonably assured that the virus definitions are updated on a frequent basis. Note that most anti-virus programs also check for trojans and such, as well as the more notable virii.

Hope this helps,

Nikk

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