First OpenOffice Virus Appears

May 23, 2007: Microsoft must be rubbing its hands together with glee at the news that the first virus has appeared for OpenOffice.

According to antivirus specialist Sophos, the SB/Badbunny-a worm affects Windows, Linux and Mac systems but appears to be more of a proof of concept than a malicious piece of code.

As it stands the virus does not actually cause any damage to the system, but rather highlights vulnerabilities while showing a pornographic image of a man in a bunny suit. To become infected, users must open the OpenOffice file badbunny.odg, after which the worm behaves differently depending on what operating system OpenOffice is running on.

"The group responsible for writing the BadBunny malware don't seem to have much confidence in it spreading as they have sent it directly to our labs,” says Graham Cluley, senior technology consultant for Sophos. “The hackers have written plenty of StarBasic malware in the past, but the most 'in the wild' this one is likely to get is by displaying a picture of a furvert in the woods.”

“This is old-school malware - seemingly written to show off a proof of concept rather than a serious attempt to spy on and steal from computer users. A financially motivated hacker would have targeted more widely used software and not incorporated such a bizarre image. This is not a piece of malware which we expect to see spreading in the wild, despite its use of a photograph of unusual wildlife,” added Cluley.

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