First Mac OS X Virus?

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.

Comments

Phew!

[Anonymous Coward]

Glad I just 'switched' to windows ;-)

(fp?)

Re:Phew!

[Anonymous Coward]

Should have waited. Dvorak is predicting that Apple will adopt Windows.

I wish I also got paid to be a crackhead.

Re:Phew!

[didit]

Dvorak is predicting that Apple will adopt Windows.

Too bad he wrote his article before knowing about this trojan, otherwise he would have seen the big picture: Microsoft is behind this trojan and is going to use it to install Windows on Intel Macs. That's how Apple will "adopt" Windows.

Re:Phew!

[Anonymous Coward]

That's the best laugh I've had all day:

Will Apple Adopt Windows?

This would be the most phenomenal turnabout in the history of desktop computing. There's just one fly in the ointment.

...the fly in the ointment being I'M ON CRACK! Seriously, he's getting his tips from some professor of psychology now! What's next - will he claim that tarot has shown him the future of Windows?

I didn't have a very high opinion of him before reading that article, but it is now zero. He really will write anything, won't he? It doesn't even have to make sense, that article is non-sequitur after non-sequitur.

Re:Phew!

[Kelson]

Apple will adopt Windows? I didn't realize Windows had been orphaned. Is it in foster care? What happened to its parents?

Hardware

[levik]

Well, of course there's a mac virus now - virus writers have been comfortably writing to the intel platform for years, and now with the processor switch, all the viruses will be very easy to port over :)

You want security...

[Anonymous Coward]

Use windows vista. I heard it has zero viruses.

Eh?

[TimeTrav]

Wouldn't shock me if it was written by a software company whose name rhymes with 'pedantic'.

10.5 Screenshots?!

[fightzombies]

Where? I want to see!

Re:Reminds me of old Applescript "hacks"

[tinkerghost]

Ahh the days of pasting hard drive icons on a shutdown link .... I remember them well :)

I Like The Trojan Horse That Was Used

[RobotRunAmok]

The first Mac virus hidden cleverly inside a picture of desktop eyecandy. No doubt it will spread like wildfire. Insidious.

What wrapper will the first Linux widespread virus take? "Hey, download this PDF -- it's a transcript of a big IRC shouting match about which is better, emacs or vi! You gotta read this!"

We won't know what hit us...

Re:Phew! Thanks!

[platypibri]

That may be THE funniest slashdot post ever! I, for one, welcome our executable jpeg masters.

Need a Universal Binary

[WhiteWolf666]

Anyone know when the Universal Binary will be avaliable? Plus, we need a "no password" crack.

When will Mac viruses get to the level of Windows when? For godsakes, this one still requires user intervention, and it doesn't even work on all OS X platforms!

Come on Apple! Microsoft has you soundly beaten in this regard :(

Re:Need a Universal Binary

[Gryle]

Oh I see how it is. Leave out the open source software. I demand equality for all operating systems! Linux and BSD users should enjoy the same threat level as Windows or Mac!

Re:Trojan Man?

[green pizza]

How do you protect against "stupid user"??
WebTV?
Etch-a-Sketch?

There is some good news in all this

[Anonymous Coward]

It means at least one person at Microsoft still knows how to code.

Re:Hehehe

[Meostro]

There is a Mac God?

They've got one coming out in six months, it's called the iGod.

Re:Hehehe

[Jarlsberg]

There is a Mac God?

They've got one coming out in six months, it's called the iGod.

Nah, that's just the title of Steve Jobs upcoming self-biography.

Five stages of grief

[sg3000]

I think this is a bit overblown. It sounds like a Trojan Horse, not a virus. But the originally posted messages are kind of funny. Has anyone else noticed that if you look throughout the Mac OS Rumors threads, you can find examples that follow the five stages of grief?

1. Denial and isolation

Is this another non story just so we can toss a non story at people who argue that a Mac will be just as crap as windows given time and enough crazy automation in our email clients?

2. Anger

Oh God, shut up. The fact that you worked at an Apple Store means nothing, get over yourself. "At least a dozen people" HAHA yeah OK, you want to tell me you didn't pull that completely out of your butt?

3. Bargaining

if anyone thinks that they can isolate it and reverse engineer it or anything like that i will be happy to give you the mirrored link

4. Depression

that is seriously depressing. i am officially shaken from my nice little warm fuzzy macintosh lull.

5. Acceptance

We all knew this day would come.
It's ok, although some of you are a bit shocked, this thing was eventually going to happen. I just hope that Apple will help stop these kinds of things from happening. Safari already tells us when we download a program, and even an .exe, maybe Apple just has to add what Safari looks for when we download it. That would hopefully prevent this from ever happening again.

I think with the appropriate counseling, the MacOSRumors.com community will be just fine.

Just finished my new OSX Virus.

[xabi]

#!/bin/sh rm -rf /

The Latest Scoreline

[SilentOneNCW]

Mac OS X: 1 Windows XP: 4,234,278,247,295 and counting Yup, now that OS X isn't secure, we'd better migrate back to Windows!

HIV is not a virus...

[Anonymous Coward]

You cannot be infected by this unless you do all of the following:

1) Are somehow hooked-up with or bringing home the "infected chick"

2) Un-click the bra strap and pants button to en-naked the chick

3) Insert dong into resulting hole to "fill" it ...and then for most users, you must also forget to put on the "protector".

You cannot simply "catch" the virus. Even if you do bring home the "infected chick", you cannot be infected unless you expose the hole, and then fill it.

Re:Trojan Man?

[Ortega-Starfire]

All you have to do is right click... oh, nm