I recieved an email today with a Word attachment that says:
and has an embedded object Optical.exe.
I am very suspicious of it being a virus, even though my virus checker doesn’t find anything wrong and I can’t find anything on Sophos or Trend.
Anyone have any info on this?
I did a google and found a number of references, but only one of them dealt with the possibility of it being a virus (and they hadn’t tried it). However I found the program as such, with the same instructions on several sites, so there might be a fair chance that it’s just sommething that will create an optical illusion. I don’t want to test it though.
What scares me is it could have been legit at one time, and a little virus was added later. As a rule, .exe files from anyone but trusted sources are a bit risky.
It’s not a virus, it’s an optical illusion. However, I don’t suggest opening the attachment (just good practice - NEVER open an exe received via e-mail -never ever ever :). I don’t care if your saintly mother who also owns 3 degress in computer science and helped write Norton Anti Virus sent it to you - don’t open .exe files received via e-mail! 
).
I did find a page that has the file, I downloaded it and scanned it, and ran it. Didn’t find any virii, or spyware, or trojans, etc. Link is below if you’re curious what the illusion is (pretty neat one, I must say ).
I received this from a trusted friend one time and it turned out to be a really, really cool optical illusion, so cool in fact I was thinking about posting to see if anyone knew where I could find it. But, like I say, I knew the source.
Whoops. Critter42 beat me to the punch.
Well, that was interesting. I ran in under linux with wine
wine /tmp/optical.exe
After downloading it from the above mentioned site.
Somebody spoil it for me? I’m lazy. What does it make your hand look like?
Somebody spoil it for me? I’m lazy. What does it make your hand look like?
Jean Kirkpatrick devouring a Nicaragua shaped box of chocolate. 
A thousand pardons, I meant to include “(with apologies to Berkeley Breathed)” in the correct spot.
I just tried it, (downloading the file from the link that Critter provided, which I suppose could be just as likely to harbour a virus…
I’ve seen this trick before; the screen shows a nested set of rotating spirals (just like those cheesy hypnotism things you see in B movies) - you stare at this for half a minute then look away (in this case at your hand); whatever you look at appears to be pulsing and writhing
For Mac users who don’t want to mess with Virtual PC just to see the damn thing, it’s the same as the old BugEyes program (re-released in 1996 to make it compatible with “modern computers”). If anyone expresses interest I’ll put it up in my web space and post a link.
I have an animated GIF that does the same thing, without having to worry about running a strange executable. It’s just some rotating concentric spirals. It’s nowhere near interesting enough to justify running or forwarding any suspicious executables.
I know this isn’t what the question was about, but I’ve seen this optical illusion all the time. I actually watch credits after shows and movies and video games. If you stare at the screen the whole time the credits are scrolling up, when the MPAA logo (or whatever, stationary) appears at the end, it looks like it’s sliding down. What a thrill!