8 Comments

First Mac Virus?

February 16, 2006 by in Apple,Tech with 8 Comments

Ladies and Gentlemen, the day has come…

Yesterday, we asked the question “What would happen when a virus hits the Mac?”. Less then twenty four hours after the question, reports has surfaced that a virus/trojan is spreading rapidly in the MacOS community.

Basically: The file was named “latestpics.tgz” which decompresses into a compiled Unix executable in disguise. Then the resulted Unix file then begin to replicate and distribute over IM.

Temporary solution, secure delete the file, and that should stop the propagation, but nobody fully understands the nature of this trojan.


  • http://beszeljukmac.com dombi

    If you would like to find out about this in more detail, please read the following topic:
    http://www.ambrosiasw.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=102379

    It explains what the little app does and how it does it. It is not really a virus, since it requires user interaction. It is more like a Trojan. It does not do harm, but because of a bug in the code, it can break current applications (stop them from running).

  • http://joeanderson.co.uk/blog/ Joe Anderson

    It’s impossible for any operating system to be secure, unless it’s really simple (e.g. a calculator)..

  • humberto sabino

    ahaaahahahha

  • srussian

    It’s not a virus, it’s a trojan. For someone to get infected they have to:

    1. Download the file
    2. Uncompress it
    3. Run it (at this point there’s already one, if not two warnings)
    4. Enter the admin password

    Doesn’t really spread if you catch my drift :D

  • http://ikonq.com ikonQ

    Macs have had viruses before. But you never hear of them because they don’t affect as many people. I vaugely remember a few years ago when i was told that someone had programmed a virus into an ID3 tag on an mp3 that affected both mac and windows. Not sure how accurate that source was, but the point is, macs have had viruses before. Maybe like 50 compared to the billions available for PC.

    There is a reason that Norton Antivirus is available for mac, but most people either dont know, or are comfortable enough not to use it.

  • http://neonpulse.net TinMan

    Don’t forget about the “Autostart Virus”!

  • yog sosoth

    NAV for the Mac detects Windows viruses only. It’s hard to detect a Mac virus if no-one has ever seen one. Try to find a definition of a MacOSX virus on the Symantec site. You won’t.

    There were a heap of viruses for pre-MacOSX operating systems and a prominent one was Autostart 9802.

    ClamXAV is supposed to detect virus-like activity and it’s about all there is as far as real Mac anti-virus software goes. Symantec are selling snake oil.

  • FernyB

    Only the retards will get infected.

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