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

first

[Anonymous Coward]

on a first :)

See Steve Jobs and Steve Wosniak in Full Brokeback

[Anonymous Coward]

See Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak in full Brokeback.mov action.

I only wish I had a click counter to show how many "infect" themselves. Today may not be the dawn of the OS X virus but, it is coming. The Linux virus is coming too!

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.

MOD PARENT UP - IT IS A VIRUS

[Anonymous Coward]

Worm:

A virus attaches itself to, and becomes part of, another executable program; however, a worm is self-contained and does not need to be part of another program to propagate itself...The main difference between a computer virus and a worm is that a virus can not propagate by itself whereas worms can. A worm uses a network to send copies of itself to other systems and it does so without any intervention. In general, worms harm the network and consume bandwidth, whereas viruses infect or corrupt files on a targeted computer. Viruses generally do not affect network performance, as their malicious activities are mostly confined within the target computer itself.

Virus:

a virus is a self-replicating program that spreads by inserting copies of itself into other executable code or documents. A computer virus behaves in a way similar to a biological virus, which spreads by inserting itself into living cells.

Trojan:

Trojan horse programs cannot replicate themselves, in contrast to some other types of malware, like viruses or worms. A Trojan horse can be deliberately attached to otherwise useful software by a cracker, or it can be spread by tricking users into believing that it is a useful program.

Now that a MacOS X virus has been released, Apple fanboys are trying to redefine "virus" to mean what "worm" used to mean, i.e. a network-aware, self-replicating program that takes advantage of a security exploit to reproduce. THAT IS A WORM, NOT A VIRUS. Viruses require a user to execute an infected program to reproduce, and they do so by inserting copies of their own executable code into other executables. Trojans don't do that, so this isn't a trojan. Trojans rely on the user to pass along the trojan to other users, but they have no means of infecting other files or automatically spreading over the network.

Face it fanboys: your god has a virus. And even worse, you are so technically incompetent you don't even know what a virus is. You aren't qualified to be taking part in this discussion.

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!