Email hijack in Linux?

I'm stumped.

My computer has been sending out viruses via email. I first thought something might be up when I got a mail delivery error notification for an email that I didn't send to an address I don't have which belongs to a person I don't know. Just now I received an email from someone I do know saying that I had sent them a virus.

Normally I would attribute this to a virus on my computer. My problem, however, is that in the last couple days when these things happened, I have been running Linux. To be specific, Debian version Sarge (testing). As far as I know, viruses don't tend to target Linux computers.

Right now I am running this computer off a simple network with two other Windows XP computers. We have a simple Linksys router which acts as a basic hardware firewall. I have not configured any software firewall in Debian so I have no idea if one is up.

What do you think is causing this? Is it a virus? If it is, are there any anti-virus programs that can work in Linux? Could I try using Wine or Cross-Over Office to install my copy of Norton in Linux and use it to scan?

Any ideas about how to stop this or find out more?

 

GeniusBoy, you may have seen this link on yesterday's MG index, but I wanted to bring it up again. Perhaps this could be part of the situation?
http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1105_2-5213781.html
Note: I would have linked this throught MG, but I don't know how to.

 

Thanks for the link, Robster, but I don't think that's my problem.

The first email I got was a bounce to a non-existant address of what was obviously a virus infected email which I did not send. Meaning that some program must either be using my computer as an SMTP server and replicating itself using my account, or a virus has infected my computer is sending email from another computer with a spoofed header which uses my address as the sender.

The second scenario seems more likely to me due to the second email that I received. It was from someone I know, whose email address is in my address book, indicating that a virus may have leeched that info off my computer. This scenario is puzzling, however, as for the last few days I have been exclusively running Debian (Linux) and most viruses are Windows based.

I have had Ethereal running for the past few hours in order to try and log any suspicious activity from my computer in order to determine if it is indeed acting as a surreptitious email server. So far I have not seen any SMTP activity. As far as I know, email is sent via SMTP. Does anyone know if there is anything else that I should be looking out for?

 

Maybe someone has " spoofed" your email address before you started running Linux? Have you a separate /different email address in Linux to your old operating system? Just a suggestion as I don't know Linux.

Maybe there is nothing wrong with your Linux side. Bazza