If you haven't seen this one already, here it is. This one looks
pretty dangerous.
<http://letters.washingtonpost.com/W1RH0317EC4F1DD4EF87F32F3C4810>
Personal <http://letters.washingtonpost.com/
W1RH0317EC6F9DD4EF87F32F3C4810>
Tech Tuesday, Feb. 21, 2006 Washington Post
Wake-Up Call for Mac Users
One of the great injustices of the computing world was finally addressed
last week -- Mac users can no longer complain that Windows folks get
to hog
all the viruses for themselves. Now they have some of their own.
As my colleagues Brian Krebs and Mike Musgrove wrote in Friday's
paper, a
new, largely ineffectual virus
<http://letters.washingtonpost.com/W1RH0317EC3FBDD4EF87F32F3C4810> has
begun targeting Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger, the latest version of Apple's
operating
system.
This particular piece of malware -- called "OSX/Leap.A" by Symantec and
"Oompa-Loompa" by Mac software developer Andrew Welch, who published
one of
the first documentations
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of it
online -- comes disguised as a compressed archive of the latest
screen shots
of Apple's next operating system.
But when you decompress this "latestpics.tgz" archive, you only see a
single
file that has a JPEG picture's icon -- except that file is a small
program
that will embed copies of itself in other programs on a Mac, then spread
itself <http://letters.washingtonpost.com/
W1RH0317EC3E5DD4EF87F32F3C4810>
via Apple's iChat instant-messaging program.
So how much trouble are Mac users in? Is it true that, as Krebs wrote
in his
chat, "the security honeymoon may be over
<http://letters.washingtonpost.com/W1RH0317EC4E4DD4EF87F32F3C4810>
for Mac
users"?
I don't think so. First, there never was such a thing as a security
honeymoon. Mac OS X was and remains more resistant to malware attacks
than
Windows, thanks in large part to the restrictions it places on the
ability
of any user and any program to tinker with the guts of the system.
(You'll
find this same basic defense deployed in Microsoft's Windows Vista
when that
successor to Windows XP ships later this year). But the Mac never was
and
never will be Shangri-La.
To read more of Rob Pegoraro's weekly e-letter, click
<http://letters.washingtonpost.com/W1RH0317EF948DD4EF87F32F3C4810> here.
-Rob Pegoraro
<http://letters.washingtonpost.com/W1GH054F963B6DD4EF87F32F3C4810>
