Infected by Lara Croft? Mmm...

Everyone’s favourite hero adventurer, Lara Croft, has now completed her merchandising cycle. Not only can you slake your Lara thirst through buying coffee mugs, posters, action figures, books, trading cards, dog tags, jewellery, clothing and even

Everyone's favourite hero adventurer, Lara Croft, has now completed her merchandising cycle. Not only can you slake your Lara thirst through buying coffee mugs, posters, action figures, books, trading cards, dog tags, jewellery, clothing and even Lara Croft buttons, but you can now download your very own Lara Croft virus. The perfect accessory for the Tomb Raider freak who thinks they have it all.

Discovered by Kaspersky Labs, the Lara Croft virus masquerades as a Tomb Raider desktop theme file and spreads via IRC. Once an unwitting target is infected, the virus searches for any copies of mIRC installed and overwrites a file used by mIRC for configuration – specifically, SCRIPT.INI. The modified INI file then sends 'on-join' DCC requests to anyone who enters a channel you are in. This virus, like the majority of other viruses that use mIRC to spread, modifies INI files in such a way that the hapless victim is not notified of the outgoing DCC send requests – thus keeping them blissfully unaware of what's going on.

No comment has been forthcoming from Eidos regarding the Lara Croft virus. However, you can be sure that someone, somewhere at Eidos has their thinking cap on as they attempt to figure out a way to sell this as the latest product in a long, long, long line of Lara Croft and Tomb Raider merchandise.

Fortunately, the Lara Croft virus carries no actual malicious payload. This, coupled with the restriction of spreading via IRC alone, puts the virus in the very low risk category for infection. Unless, of course, you DCC it to your Tomb Raider fanatic friends on purpose. Muhahahaha.