Leopard's First Virus

What's the url to the site? Not that I want to look at porn or get a virus, just curious

OS X is slowly becoming windows. It starts with one virus. Soon thousands then we will all be doomed.

PS: Justin, could you make your sig smaller. It takes up several posts' size.

It needs permission though. With Windows XP, it just happens because of no security. With Vista, you just press Allow because you get irritated that it keeps popping up

Leopard == Windows Vista ?

I don't know what constitutes a virus, but anything that involves consciously downloading something, and entering your admin password to install it, CANNOT be a virus. If it be so, then the word virus has been stretched beyond all usefulness.

As I recall, things of this nature have been released to the Mac community before, but they have not been called viruses.

What's the url to the site? Not that I want to look at porn or get a virus, just curious

http://www.macworld.com/news/2007/10/31/tr...p?lsrc=mwtoprss

See this thread for more details: http://forum.insanelymac.com/index.php?showtopic=68825

I don't know what constitutes a virus, but anything that involves consciously downloading something, and entering your admin password to install it, CANNOT be a virus. If it be so, then the word virus has been stretched beyond all usefulness.

Cheers,

hecker

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!! leopard isnt completely pure. I don't fancy installing some virus software on a mac, it just would not fell right.

james

That is not a virus. That is software installed by the user. Bit of a difference.

Doesn't matter that the software was falsely advertised. It was downloaded. I could probably write a program that would run the command "rm -rf /" in terminal. Is that a virus? No... That is user being idiot....

@all listen to hecker

~R

LOL XD ........ here is one .... soon you'll get Millions ....... Dammit .... !

Flu is a virus, this is stupidity

Yeah there is no real protection from a "virus" like that. The only protection really would just allow the user to either a) not download stuff or not allow the computer modified. Don't know about the rest of you guys, but I'll take my chances the way it is now.

It's NOT a virus, are OS X users that removed for this that they can't tell the difference between a virus and Trojan?

I am on the news team. It is my job to write about something, but make it sound WAY worse than it actually is.

Nice one then, you should do the same about the leopard firewall, it's chilling how unsafe it is

Interesting discussion, especially since I have been a windows/PC user for many years and have recently purchased an iMac for home use. I hate Vista, and really like OS X. I have a mix of XP, Vista, and linux on my home net.

I believe this malicious piece of software is just the beginning of increased threats that will be aimed at OS X. Apple sold more computers last quarter than ever, for good reason- they are nicely designed, use intel-based hardware which will run XP/Vista, and use a great operating system. Malicious software writers are going to set their sights more on OS- X because of its increased popularity.

It would be naive to think that OS X is immune or has some special resistance to this kind of attack. No OS does. It certainly has protective features, but in many cases, like this one, it is a confused or uninformed end user (of which there are many) that allows the intrusion to occur. I have to laugh when I see the die-hard mac fanboys refusing to admit that OS-X can be affected by viruses like Windows. I think that will be a reality of the future.

Interesting discussion, especially since I have been a windows/PC user for many years and have recently purchased an iMac for home use. I hate Vista, and really like OS X. I have a mix of XP, Vista, and linux on my home net.

 

I believe this malicious piece of software is just the beginning of increased threats that will be aimed at OS X. Apple sold more computers last quarter than ever, for good reason- they are nicely designed, use intel-based hardware which will run XP/Vista, and use a great operating system. Malicious software writers are going to set their sights more on OS- X because of its increased popularity.

 

It would be naive to think that OS X is immune or has some special resistance to this kind of attack. No OS does. It certainly has protective features, but in many cases, like this one, it is a confused or uninformed end user (of which there are many) that allows the intrusion to occur. I have to laugh when I see the die-hard mac fanboys refusing to admit that OS-X can be affected by viruses like Windows. I think that will be a reality of the future.

This is NOT a virus, it's a TROJAN.

For the purposes of intelligent discussion, why is it so important to make that distinction? After all they are both malicious forms of software, and I would argue that a trojan is potentially worse. Trojans usually are created to escape detection for more nefarious uses that involve information theft and monetary gain.

i've made things like this that {censored} up your system for tiger. if give your paswd, anything can happen to your system

This needs help from the user, the OS simply can't stop this kind of Trojan, that goes for any OS. At least OS X has had the means to stop executing root without the users knowledge. This sort of thin prays on users who dont know what they are doing or downloading rather than the OS itself.

This needs help from the user, the OS simply can't stop this kind of Trojan, that goes for any OS. At least OS X has had the means to stop executing root without the users knowledge. This sort of thin prays on users who dont know what they are doing or downloading rather than the OS itself.

You mean like in Vista?

You mean like in Vista?

Any user no matter what OS, thankfully the days of Blaster like worms are gone and even Vista has enough protection to stop that, pre XP SP2 didn't.

I guess that means the honeymoon is over for apple. Was bound to happen with the increased sales. My apple fanboy friends will be pretty irked though. Still it's a trojan, I mean I hate to be a jerk but most of the time it is pretty easy (for me anyway) to tell the difference between a ligit dl and a trojan. Maybe I should start "how not to mess up your system with a trojan" classes

While I was amazed by the fact this thing exists, I'm not worried about it, because it takes severe user stupidity to install it.

Only use trusted porn.