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

It is a virus.

[tpgp]

Sounds more like a trojan to me.

Unlike viruses and worms, Trojans do not reproduce by infecting other files nor do they self-replicate.

I would say (from the description in tfa) that this piece of malware is more similar to a virus then a worm or a trojan.

Why?

1) It appears to self propagate (Trojans do not do this).
2) It appears to attach to other executables (worms are stand alone)

So we have a self-propagating piece of code that attaches itself to other executables. Quacks like a virus if you ask me.

Re:Trojan Man?

[Pulse_Instance]

They will fix it in the same way that they "fixed" the iPod nanos scratchable screen. Tell people not to use it in the manner that they used it before.

Re:Phew!

[Megane]

Dvorak is predicting that Apple will adopt Windows.

What a dumbass. First of all, he's about a month and a half early. (check the calendar)

He's basing this on the ideas of someone else who thinks that removing Firewire from iPods means anything about the operating system Apple will use, never mind that Windows supports FireWire just fine, it's just that PCs have been slow to adopt it. And Apple wants to switch to Windows because because they switched CPUs? You mean to one they had already been making sure for years that their own OS would run on? The one with a much faster update schedule than Microsoft could ever dream of?

Wow. He's one of the oldest and biggest trolls out there in the computer-related press, and he's still trolling. Remember, his target audience is PC Magazine, read by the kind of folks who don't want to believe that it's a mistake for them to still be using Windows. So he's just providing more comfort to them that mean ol' Apple won't take their tattered, filthy, stinking, virus-laden security blanket away. Hey, switch my keyboard already, I'm writing just like Dvorak!