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First Mac OS X Virus?

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the is-nothing-sacred dept.

bubba451 writes "MacRumors reports on what may be the first virus to affect Mac OS X, disguised as screenshots for the upcoming Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard. From the report: 'The resultant file decompresses into what appears to be a standard JPEG icon in Mac OS X but was actually a compiled Unix executable in disguise. An initial disassembly reveals evidence that the application is a virus or was designed to give that impression.' The virus is said to also spread via Bonjour instant messaging." Update: 02/17 00:09 GMT by P : This is not a virus, it is a simple Trojan Horse: it requires manual user interaction to launch the executable. See Andrew Welch's dissection.

5 of 577 comments (clear)

  1. Hehehe by Ravenscall · · Score: 0, Flamebait

    First, they dump the Power PC chip right before it is announced that they will be able to push it to 6 Ghz, then, they start getting viruses.

    Where is your God now Mac users?

    (Liked Macs when they still pushed performance over style)

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    You say you want a revolution....
  2. Re:Phew! by pHatidic · · Score: 0, Flamebait

    I first learned about the Columbine Shooting when checking Slashdot. I first learned about the Columbia explosion by checking Slashdot. Now the first Mac virus. Slashdot brings me news of another life altering national tragedy.

  3. Re:Trojan Man? by LordSnooty · · Score: 1, Flamebait

    The very flaw, of course, that people regulary rip into Windows over. I've seen Windows' "hide extensions for known file types" option described as an OS flaw in the past, but of course in AppleWorld it's the trojan writer being "sneaky".

  4. Re:Phew! by soft_guy · · Score: 0, Flamebait

    Dvorak has a long history of idiotic predictions, especially ones that bash the Mac.

    When the Mac first shipped, he predicted that it would fail because "no one knows what a font is" and "no one cares about having different sized type". He went on to say these things were too complicated for the average business user to understand.

    Throughout the 90s he pronounced Apple and the Mac to be "dead" many times. Oh, and he thinks the iBook only appeals to gay people.

    Dvorak is a big fat idiot.

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    Avoid Missing Ball for High Score
  5. Useless Distinction by nuckfuts · · Score: 0, Flamebait

    To all the purists out there who can't resist piping up with "It's not a virus - it's a trojan":

    It's a useless distinction to say that trojans are not viruses because they require user intervention.

    Would you go around saying that gonorrhoea is not a true disease because you have to do something voluntarily to get it?

    Trojans are a CLASS of virus.