>Is it possible that you forwarded an attachment that contained a virus >that you weren't aware of because it didn't affect you? My ISP has >caught virused mail and cleaned or deleted it before it could get any >further but I am not sure what would have happened had I received it and >passed it on - what say the experts on this list?
You would be unlikely to forward on the virus. None of the current viri in Windows do anything except deliver their payload. And they aren't in any kind of disguised format (ie: they aren't an infected jpg or the likes). They are the virus and nothing more. So you would have no reason to pass it on, because you wouldn't get it and open it and say "Hey, this is great, I should forward this to a dozen of my friends". The instance wouldn't occur, so you wouldn't forward it on unknowingly. If it was a trojan horse (which the current viri are blurring those lines BTW), you still wouldn't forward it without knowing, because it would be in the form of a windows program, which you can't run, and thus again, you would never be in the position of saying "Hey this is great, let me send it to a friend". (Virus: a program that self replicates and attaches itself to other programs in an effort to be spread. No user interaction is needed to cause and spread infection. Trojan Horse: a program that claims to be something good, so you are fooled into running it, so it can do something bad Current viri on windows are a bit of a hybrid. Most do not self replicate onto other systems. You need to knowingly run the program to release the payload. Once the payload is released, it will then self replicate and attach itself to other programs to avoid being killed, as well as send itself on to other people hoping to get them to run it as well. So as such, they are really a virus in a trojan horse package. There are ones that are more of a true virus and will spread at least within a network without any user interaction. WDEF in System 6 was a perfect virus. Nothing had to be done other than put a floppy disk in the drive. The disk would be infected as soon as it was mounted, and when that disk was placed in another Mac, all drives connected to that other Mac would instantly be infected. And so one and so on. Simple cure? Rebuild the desktop of every disk before mounting it. Or move to System 7 or later where the virus was no longer able to spread. I can't give an example off the top of my head of a perfect Trojan Horse on the Mac... maybe someone else can ) >Also, by having my ISP scan for viruses, I can rest assured that if >someone does devise a Mac virus, I will be protected (and it really is >dirt cheap)! Careful with that assumption. They may only be scanning for Windows viri. When a mac one comes out, they may or may not scan for it. Also, you assume the virus will be spread via email. There are other ways to spread them. A developer of your favorite software can become infected and release an update to their program that is infected. MacAddict did this a while back. They became infected with a worm, didn't know it, and shipped an entire month's issue with infected CDs. Fortunatly, they realized it before the issues hit the stands and were able to get the word out on how to keep the worm from spreading off the CD. -chris <http://www.mythtech.net> ___________________________________________________________________________ To unsubscribe send a mail message with a SUBJECT line of "unsubscribe" to <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> or <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
