Simply viewing a GIFAR won't infect a system; the attack method requires that the user be linked to the hybridized infection from an appropriately malicious web site.

Alert! New security attack via Java applet Microsoft Corp. has identified a serious vulnerability associated with the Microsoft Virtual Machine.

In 2010, a similar Java-applet-based social engineering attack capable of executing malicious code on Windows, Mac OS X and Linux computers, was used to distribute the Boonana Trojan program.