the only thing worse than finding a worm in your apple is

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panthera

panthera

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finding half a worm.
Old joke.
I am not publishing the link, and I will reserve the ever so slight sense of Schadenfreude this brought me to myself, but, dah-links, somebody has written one hell of a good virus for the apple devotees of the world.

Nope, it wasn't little ole' me, I had nothing to do with it.

It does, however, bring that old saying 'pride goeth before the fall' to mind.

Ah, when smugness comes, er, shall we say, crashing down?

(One of the journalists who first published this info got some really nasty attacks, including some really icky virus attacks from those dear, sweet, butter-wouldn't-melt-in-their-mouth apple users for daring to attack their *gravitas*. Hope to hell they don't shoot the messenger boy here.)

So now I will leave some space free for the usual blah blah blah about how superior macs are, yada yada yada.

If you know a nice person who works with macs, you might want to warn them. I guess I just did on our site, and, considering how anal-retentive and nasty a few of the mac disciples have been to us non-apple-phreaks from time to time, this may officially be regarded as an olive branch. Even if there is a big smile on my face whilst extending it.

I guess the weight of all that superiority was finally too much and 'crash' got a new definition.
Tee-hee.
 
They had a gamers thing set up with a bunch of game consoles in our school today. The XBox (hooked up to a projector for 150 inches of low-def goodness) got the BSoD when they started it up.
 
Odd...

I service Apple equipment for a living. I've not seen any mention of this from Macworld magazine, nothing from macintouch.com or anything on TUAW ("The Ultimate Apple Weblog"). I also subscribe to several newsfeeds directly from Apple.

I went back and did a search of my sources to see about a virus alert for Mac OS X, and nothing has come up recently - just the mention of various hoaxes and proof-of-concept, not-released-into-the-wild viruses for OS X. I see an alert about a bogus iPod virus, from April 7 07, an article about some iPods shipping with a Windows virus back in October of 06, and the May 06 Oompa-Loompa virus hoax.

I also checked with our contact at Symantec, with whom we have a cross platform anti-virus site license. They have no reports of any new threats for OS X. No mention of any virus threats with the folks at ClamXAV.

The only thing I can figure is perhaps you are talking about the recent issue with people who can physically access a Mac in person being able to retrieve passwords stored in memory while using Mac OS X? Thats a security-related issue that Apple has been slow to patch. We're hoping it gets taken care of in the next security upgrade, and I hope they release that before I dispatch the next set of images.

Panthera, please post all the information about this virus threat. All us Mac folks will need to know the name of the beastie, the name of the organization that broke the news, and I would love to see the articles for your journalists who got these nasty attacks, so I can get an idea what a steaming pile of mess half my user base is going to be in after this hits us.

Thank goodness everything seems to be just fine for us right now. No strange tickets in the helpdesk system.

On the edge of my seat,

-Eric
 
for what it's worth

The first mention I read of it did not link to the originators, since they are legit your resources probably aren't registering this as a threat. Yet. It got the posting it did because of the nastiness the journalist had got on his blog about it.
I figure it will either play out quickly or catch on and be a big pain in the ass for a while, then die out.
What would not be so much fun is for it to serve as the inspiration and engine for more malicious folks to take it seriously and really write a true, seriously damaging virus.
Given the false sense of security ("we don't get viruses") which permeates the apple world, a serious attack would wreak havoc.
Of course, it may just remain a gimmick and that will be that. Half of the point is to poke fun at the arrogance and holier-than-thou of the mac world. Dealing with tech-support at the university and the mentality of the mac Jünger there, I could see their reactions to this: utter panic.

 
so let me get thist straight...

this "virus" is a prank? its only called a "virus" tounge-in-cheek? hell... it even says its "a fun prank to play."

its an ART PROJECT? it does a funny thing to your screen, using the tilt sensor in your MacBook?

and it does not spread by any means other than someone BEING PHYSICALLY PRESENT and INSTALLING SOFTWARE ON YOUR COMPUTER while you aren't looking?

and it does NO HARM?

Thank you for wasting my time, Panthera. You, sir, are a jack#ss.
 
Considering that

the underlying technology lends itself to all sorts of less amusing infections and several previous viruses started out as purely isolated, controlled agents, I hardly think this should be taken lightly. Just look at the rootkit fun Sony gave us. All it takes is an idea and those fertile adolescent minds are in high gear.
Not all macs sit in high security, isolated areas.

Obviously, you are upset and I am sorry about that. My intention was to inform. Yes, I do get tired of the holier-than-thou air so many mac disciples take, but the warning, if delivered tongue-in-cheek, was meant sincerely.
 
Oh,

And, does anyone really believe there is no other copy of the code? Can anyone really believe that there isn't someone out there who, having seen it, can't find the inspiration to copy or 'better' it?
This vulnerability is well documented, the potential is given...and anyone who can work with Linux wouldn't have too much trouble figuring out how to proceed.
Boot-camp and div;x are two examples of just how fast something can be achieved...
 
Panthera,

You've been very vocal about how much you dislike Mac users in the past. You said you were suffering from a case of schadenfreude about this "one hell of a good virus for the apple" which turned out to be nothing but an art project.

Kinda feels to me like the boy who cried wolf. I'm going to have to take whatever you say in the future with a grain of salt.

As for the rest of the Mac users here on AW - there are STILL no widely distributed Macintosh OS X viruses to worry about at this point. All of the virus warnings we've had involve either hoaxes or proof-of-concept prototypes, which have not had any wide distribution.

HOWEVER, if you are not running some sort of antivirus program, you really are opening yourself up to possible attack in the future. There WILL be a virus out there at some point.

Symantec sells an AV program for the Mac, as does Intego. I believe the commercial applications will also remove any Windows viruses that might come into your Mac on an email from a Windows system. While they wouldn't be able to infect your machine, you could potentially pass those viruses onto Windows users, so having that sort of protection would prevent you from becoming a "vector", and insure that you are a good citzen on your network and the Internet at large.

If you are a little light on funding, google "ClamXAV" which is a port of the free ClamAV for unix systems. I don't think ClamXAV has active monitoring of virus infections, but having it installed and updated would at least let you remove any potential infection. I believe ClamXAV is installed by default with Mac OS X Server.

Here's the link for ClamXAV.

www.clamxav.com

ClamXAV - Trusted Antivirus & Malware Scanner for macOS | Download Your Free Trial

Protect your Mac with ClamXAV - trusted antivirus and malware scanner for macOS. Enjoy real-time protection, automatic updates and lightweight performance. Try our 30-day free trial today.
www.clamxav.com www.clamxav.com
 
Unbelievable! YAY FOR ERIC !!! shame on pantera////

He drops a grenade, then flees the carnage, promising not to return and help manage the damage he has so gleefully inflicted.

Eric, I take my hat off to you in gratitude for standing up to and exposing this bully, and I bow to you for using sheer intelligence and class to illuminate how deviously he operates, and with such obvious glee--just like a Nazi.

"The only thing worse than finding half a worm in your apple..." is finding a Neo-Nazi sliming every thread at Aworg, and getting away with it until today, the day that Eric outed the Aworg bully, and shoved a fire hydrant up his ass. YAY for Eric

Maybe Eric will inspire the rest of us not to take it any more, and sit silently, letting the bully have his way with us.
 
I should know better...

...than to get myself involved in a flamewar.

The only reason I even responded to this thread in the first place is because I am a technology administrator for a living. I have to deal with threats on both sides - Windows and Macintosh. Every threat has to be taken seriously... an since there were no real live, in-the-wild viruses for the Mac, the discovery of one would have been quite an event and a definite shift of mentality for quite a lot of folks in the Mac community.

Where I work, we have all sorts of computers - Windows, Macintosh, various flavors of Unix. Viruses are a real problem for the entire network, regardless of what platform the are infecting. Our Macs and Unix workstations suffer when the Windows servers have virus issues, just in a different way. When we have to deal with an outbreak of a virus , its always a mess, but we deal with the problems as a whole, not from seperate camps for each OS.

The operating system wars are over. You can save money and run more applications on Windows, you can spend more money and be more secure on Mac, and you can choose the DIY route and get it all for free with Unix.

Its 2008. So do what you want - who cares what OS you run?

My problem is the delighted glee with which a certian small percentage of people will point out every little security threat to the Mac OS. Instead of saying "Hey, I heard of a possible threat and thought it would be prudent to warn any Mac users of AW.ORG to something that could be potentially damaging" we get what boils down to a "Haw-haw, your mac is junk and you mac users are all incredible jerks... i'm happy that there is finally something horrible out there that will put you in your place."

That kind of fearmongering and HATE is something that I can't stand. Its something that none of us should put up with, and it wouldn't be tolerated here if it was someone lashing out against Frigidare fans, for instance, or the GLBT members of the board.

In retrospect, I should have simply asked Robert to remove this thread altogether, citing my problems with it. Instead, I posted useful and correct information for our mac-using citizens. The name calling I engaged in was childish, i'll admit, and done in frustration. I should not have stooped to the same level as the original poster.

Inasmuch as calling someone a Nazi - well, I have to say that I think thats a bit much. As a German American, having gone to an mostly jewish high school, and looking like I do, I've been senselessly called a Nazi from time to time and I'm quite offended by it. The original poster might be a jackass and a bully, but I am quite sure he's not a supporter of wold domination or the senseless genocide of the Jewish race.

Now, if there is anyone who needs a hand protecting their computer from virus threats, why not post it here?
 
Good Lord, I don't think anyone on this thread is a bully or a Nazi or whatever needless names have been cast about.

There is also the internet tradition that anyone who calls someone else a Nazi in a forum, automatically loses the argument (unless of course they are conversing with a real Nazi, who are thankfully few and far between).

Remember, we're about appliances, classic and modern, not so much about computers and certainly not about insulting people for their computing preferences.

That said, the latest virus that truly IS worrisome is one that doesn't come on a Mac or a PC, but rather is spread by new type devices like those cute computerized photograph display frames, or even memory cards. The one I've read about busily collects "game passwords" and then sends them back to an IP address in China. Harmless in that mode, but the scary thing is there is no current virus protection software that can detect, thwart, and delete this virus, and the way it is written means that it could self-replicate rapidly and do far more destructive and damaging things - like collect all your financial information and send it somewhere.

It is probably only PC/Windows centric at this time, but who knows... maybe it can infect MAC's running in Windows emulation mode or even in native Mac mode.

The lesson is that the bad guys have moved from the simply annoying virus worms for the heck of it, and have been hired on by organized crime to try to steal your money. As if the high price of oil wasn't good enough!
 

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