Is it possible for a virus to stealth itself in an mp3 file or jpeg/gif/tiff file?

Anything.. everything.. all of the above

I received a file attached to an E-mail sent from a friends computer. It was something like... Shelleyan Orphan - Century Flower.mp3.scr I did not know if it was an mp3 file or a screen saver, because it had two extentions! I did not open it which was just aswell because it turned out to be a virus. On this site I read about enabeling your PC to show all known file extentions... .mp3 .pif .mpeg etc Without the known extentions being shown I may have thought the file was a music file. This does not really answer your question but it may help to prevent a potential virus being executed.

hi miranda, yes it is. and to michael12, very wise. never open up any email with 2 extensions. all the best, murve

A virus can "attempt" to stealth itself in an MP3 or GIF/JPG, but if you open if with your friendly MP3 player or graphics viewer, nothing will happen. Well, it may fail, because the format of the file is incorrect, but the virus can not spread. The only way is as pointed out above, where the file is a double extension one, AND your Explorer settings indicate to not show common extensions. Then a file that is really called NEATPICTURE.JPG.EXE will appear as NEATPICUTURE.JPG and when you click on it thinking it is a picture, instead it will run because it is really an EXE file.