.txt file viruses?
 

Just wondering whether it is possible for a .txt file to have a virus? The reason I ask is I was at my parents this weekend on my old com, and found two text files I needed, so I emailed them to my hotmail account as attachments with the idea being I would just download them onto my laptop when I get back home. Now when I try to download them it says an unkown virus has been found... bit annoying as I'm going to have to wait until next weekend to get them again.

/edit: Hotmail now says there are no viruses in them, so I have them now, Hurrah! Strange all the same tho...

Yes, text files can contain viruses. One of the sample strings for testing your anti-virus proggy is typed into a text file.

They can contain virus code. It's pretty doubtful that you'd ever accidentally execute that code.

Now, there might be exploits inside various text editors that a specially crafted text file could take advantage of. But that's not really a virus per se.

At my work we often send batch files or .exes as .txt files to client's so that it will pass through virus blockers on mailservers, and then they can change the extension of the file back to .exe, or .bat, and run the file. The .txt file itself is not malicious. Now, funny.txt.wsf is an example of something to keep your eyes open for and NOT to purge and not even touch.

Outlook express by default will not allow opening of attachments and puts up a generic warning about some attachments containing virus. Just enable attachments and restart.

Note also that Windoze defaults to hide extensions for known file types, so when you're looking at harmless.txt in Explorer, you can't tell that it's actually harmless.txt.exe. Double-click that file, and boom - you're infected. Just something to be aware of.

It also depends on the application you have associated with .txt files, for "running" them. It could be harmless text opened up with notepad, but opening the text file with Word could cause it to run a macro.