I almost never caught any virus on the computer, but today I just saw a virus (I am using Windows 7):
happy cat.rmvb
(just a sample file name). Seems innocent, isn't it? But the icon is very suspicious, because I set up Win7 to use VLC to open .rmvb
files, but the icon is a blue play button, so I right click on the file and look at the properties, and it says "Application".
So for the viewers of this page who wants to have a little fun to figure out why that is, stop reading here, and think how that was achieved?
So it turns out the file is named happy cat.rmvb [150 spaces].exe
So the .rmvb
is not really the extension. The real extension is .exe
but it is hidden to the far right of the name. Oh well, I almost open it and click "OK to open" because I usually is not so afraid of .rmvb
files -- or, it could have been .txt
which have made me even less suspicious.
So my question is, how to avoid this kind of virus? I don't want to constantly pay for anti-virus software, and also, not all virus program can catch all virus (it may catch 95% or 99% but not all). If that simple .exe
is merely simple lines of program to wipe out the whole C: drive or D: drive, there is really no way to prevent it, especially it seems innocent enough for me to approve to open it.
So the question is: how to avoid this kind of virus file, as it is really insidious.