First Mac Virus/Trojan Ever? Negatory...

I just had to get my two cents in on all the furor over what was supposedly reported as "the first new virus or trojan horse" to hit the Mac OS X platform. As I suspected, all the alarmists were up in arms about something that turned out to be quite the disappointment for them in the end.

I subscribe to a wonderful email newsletter from a company called Small Dog Electronics, that has supported Macs for many years. I am not associated with them in any way, except as a satisfied customer. Anyhow, the newsletter I want to quote from is called "Kibbles & Bytes #453", and they explain the whole brouhaha better than I could:

Oompa Loompa Trojans?

The blogs were abuzz with news of what some called the first "virus"
for Mac OS X, which masks itself as the latest pictures of the next
version of Mac OS X, Leopard. If you download the file
"lastestpics.tgz" and enter your password to uncompress and run it,
it would attempt to send the file to everyone in your iChat buddy list.

Contrary to some reports, this is not a virus. It requires user
action to download, decompress, and launch the program. I don't know
about you, but I don't think I would ever download a file with the
".tgz" extension. That screams WATCH OUT! You cannot be infected
with this malicious software unless you intentionally download the
file (or get it via email or iChat direct transfer). Then you would
have to double-click on the generic icon to decompress it and then
double-click on the resulting file. Depending on how you have your
system preferences set up, you would probably have to enter your
admin password,too.

You can't "catch" this virus — you have to go through all those
steps. Always remember that it is important to understand what you
are downloading. Be cautious about running applications if you are
unsure of their origins. It is easy to make a file that would erase
your hard drive if you answer "yes" when Mac OS X asks you if you
want to erase your hard drive.

Symantec, which has a vested interest in discovering security issues
so they can sell you some software, has classified this Oompa Loompa
Trojan as a category 1 threat (on at 5-point scale with 5 being the
most serious threat).

So, rest safe, Mac fans...your platfrom is as safe as ever, and can still leap tall buildings in a single bound.

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