Black and white Photography of New York by Dave Beckerman
5/04/2006
First Mac Virus?
Welcome to our world.
Here's the first article I ever read about a Mac virus. Macs are moving or have moved to the intel chip. The question I have is how difficult would it be for virus makers to port their code to the new OS.
3 comments:
Anonymous
said...
1st Mac virus? Hardly. Mac OS immune to viruses? No way. That would like saying the Titanic is unsinkable.
The OS has been "secure" in part because of "security by obscurity". Why bother writing a virus that will only affect 3-5% of desktops. Check out www.macvirus.org. They have a list of some known Mac viruses with details that date back to the mid-80s. Saying all of that, I really don't see having the OS on a different processor making writing viruses that much easier. If its written as a shell script it should run on the OS as well as a host of other UNIX flavors, regardless of the processor that the OS is running on. Same as perl or other scripting language.
Its unfortunate that Apple markets the OS has being immune to viruses (check out one of their latest TV ads). Seems like false advertising to me. However to Apple's credit, they do seem to be quick to releasing security updates which is good for all that use the OS. Also, they seem to be somewhat proactive instead of reactive.
Yeah, I cringed when I saw Apple's latest PC / Mac commercial where the PC gets a 'virus', and Mac touts that he doesn't have that problem... Eeehh! Yeah there you go Apple - brag about it to the world and give incentive and invite all those lifeless people who have nothing better to do in their lives than muck up other peoples computer systems! It's only a matter of time until those loser hackers start infiltrating all our systems for the fun of it, to just do it, to stick it to those Apples users, because they can, or whatever other reason that will lead them to do so...
I'd love to read a good book about the kids who create the viruses / worms etc. and what they're all about. I saw a pretty bad movie about it a few years ago (don't remember the name) but I think Sandra Bullock was in it.
Anyway - I think it would be fascinating to get into their heads and try and understand the thrill. Since they can't really get publicity about their endeavors - there must be a sub-culture where they can boast and compete with other black hats.
I did read the true story about the guy in California who noticed one little accounting error that lead him eventually to a hacker in Germany. That wasn't bad but it was a pretty long time ago.
3 comments:
1st Mac virus? Hardly. Mac OS immune to viruses? No way. That would like saying the Titanic is unsinkable.
The OS has been "secure" in part because of "security by obscurity". Why bother writing a virus that will only affect 3-5% of desktops. Check out www.macvirus.org. They have a list of some known Mac viruses with details that date back to the mid-80s. Saying all of that, I really don't see having the OS on a different processor making writing viruses that much easier. If its written as a shell script it should run on the OS as well as a host of other UNIX flavors, regardless of the processor that the OS is running on. Same as perl or other scripting language.
Its unfortunate that Apple markets the OS has being immune to viruses (check out one of their latest TV ads). Seems like false advertising to me. However to Apple's credit, they do seem to be quick to releasing security updates which is good for all that use the OS. Also, they seem to be somewhat proactive instead of reactive.
Yeah, I cringed when I saw Apple's latest PC / Mac commercial where the PC gets a 'virus', and Mac touts that he doesn't have that problem... Eeehh! Yeah there you go Apple - brag about it to the world and give incentive and invite all those lifeless people who have nothing better to do in their lives than muck up other peoples computer systems! It's only a matter of time until those loser hackers start infiltrating all our systems for the fun of it, to just do it, to stick it to those Apples users, because they can, or whatever other reason that will lead them to do so...
I'd love to read a good book about the kids who create the viruses / worms etc. and what they're all about. I saw a pretty bad movie about it a few years ago (don't remember the name) but I think Sandra Bullock was in it.
Anyway - I think it would be fascinating to get into their heads and try and understand the thrill. Since they can't really get publicity about their endeavors - there must be a sub-culture where they can boast and compete with other black hats.
I did read the true story about the guy in California who noticed one little accounting error that lead him eventually to a hacker in Germany. That wasn't bad but it was a pretty long time ago.
Post a Comment