Theoretically, viruses can nest themselves into any file.
How's that? How can you infect my machine by sending me a .txt file? I only know that it's possible for programs that gain access to the sensitive data of Windows such as executables.
I'm not 100% sure about .txt, but definitely with images and music files. I read about these a long time ago; here's something I just found through a quick web search from 2002:
Perrun virusHere's also one of many
StackOverflow topic about this matter.
I think the two main concepts are to either build an executable that executes a virus & displays a 'dummy' image when executed (double clicked), and naming it
something.jpg or to exploit a bug in the image viewer and embed attack code into the file, which is executed when the bug is triggered during image loading.
It's kind of hilarious and sad at the same time
You may find more “diamonds” if you search their topic history. I mean, this guy is in bitcoin since 2017 at least, and they don't know how to protect themselves already?
You're right, 4 years is a long time. Should be enough to get familiar with the topic. To be honest, people should know how to protect their computer, regardless of using Bitcoin or not. Meaning when they do get into
BTC, they should already know how to responsibly use their machines and how to protect and backup their data.