Sircam Worm/Virus blows up "strings" -- very bad!!

[Bryce Nesbitt]

Attempting to "strings" a file send by this virus:
        http://www.symantec.com/avcenter/venc/data/address@hidden

Causes "strings" to blow up with:
        tmp> strings March_Minutes.doc.bat 
        BFD internal error, aborting at coffcode.h line 763 in styp_to_sec_flags

        BFD: Please report this bug.

The version tested is:
        tmp> strings --version
        GNU strings 2.10.91
        Copyright 1997, 98, 99, 2000, 2001 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
        This program is free software; you may redistribute it under the terms 
of
        the GNU General Public License.  This program has absolutely no 
warranty.

But if you pipe it, all is fine:
        tmp> cat March_Minutes.doc.bat | strings | more
        This program must be run under Win32
        CODE
        DATA
        .idata
        .tls
        .rdata

There is no way strings should blow up no matter the contents of the file.


                        -Bryce


tmp> ls -la /lib/libc*
-rwxr-xr-x    2 root     root      1236396 Apr  6 17:58 /lib/libc-2.2.2.so
lrwxrwxrwx    1 root     root           13 May 19 22:13 /lib/libc.so.6 -> 
libc-2.2.2.so