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Re: OS X Viruses...

On Sunday, July 28, 2002, at 07:02 , Randy B. Singer wrote:

I haven't heard of a single confirmed (or otherwise) instance of the
existence of a virus which can infect OS X. (Excluding Macro viruses and
Classic viruses.) If you know of one, I would very much appreciate a
citation. None of the anti-viral software developers list one in their
archives.

There are some malicious scripts, both of the AppleScript type and the Shell or Perl Script type that will affect Mac OS X.

For AppleScript
http://home.earthlink.net/~stoba/AStrojan.html
http://www.iss.net/security_center/static/8851.php
http://risley.net/keychain/

There are malicious shell and Perl scripts out there and they are listed in SARC. I could write one in a couple of minutes that would delete everything off the disk despite seeming to be harmless. The end user would need to open it and read it to find out what was going on and even then it's childs play to obscure things, especially with Perl.
These things are very rare but they do exist. It's better to have full disclosure. Tell your members to be very careful with hints and tricks bandied about by people you don't trust implicitly.

Apple should be emphasizing this in their current "Switch" ad campaign.
There are a stunning 55,000-plus viruses that infect Windows PC's,
according to Symantec. A good number of which are catastrophically
malicious. Getting out from under this threat is a good enough reason in
and of itself to switch to a Macintosh.

Frankly the virus thing is one of the reasons I'm keen on the new .Mac stuff. I've only ever bought anti-virus software once and that was the week before Dec 31st 1999 just to assuage some paranoia.

On the job I've spent countless man hours actually fighting PC viruses. It's no joke, these things spread like wildfire. There's precious little from stopping the same threat on the Mac.

M


BTW. Mac Bible. Got me where I am today (and by that I mean..a good thing..and thanks)
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 >Re: OS X Viruses... (From: "Randy B. Singer" <email@hidden>)



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