Viruses on OS X

[xris]

Very good analogy and I guess it really sums it up, and once again highlights the hysteria the press is renowned for causing by subjective reporting.
That's where forums like this really come in handy,
I'm glad I joined and I'm grateful for your insights.

[trigg2020]

Man I'm still stuck on my os 9. I can't ge back to X

[SatCure]

The point is that even if there were three active viruses for Mac "in the wild" (there aren't) you have to see that in the perspective of some thirty THOUSAND viruses for Windows. The risk for Mac users (even if there were three) would be incredibly low. As there are currently NONE there is no risk at all. My advice is "ignore it till it happens". When it does happen it's a million to one that it will happen to you and you'll have plenty of time to take any necessary steps.

[Satcomer]

Originally Posted by Stinz12

When I was at the mac store getting my ibook G4 I was assured that there would be no viruses on it.

There are no is no active virus on OS X right now. The last thing was more malware/trojan. Apple plugged that hole and with some common sense by turning off Safari's automatic opening of downloads. Also use the Finder's Preferences->Advance tab then check mark "Show all file extensions" and you will always see if an icon is an application or not.

[PeteZZZ]

Hi
I am using MS OfficeX on a Mac running OSX Tiger 10.4.5.
The virus W97M/Thus.gen keeps appearing in Word files.
I know it's not harmful to Macs but it is to people I send these documents to, who use PC !!
I still have Virex 7.2 and it seems to work and the virus definitions are up to date. (I reverted from 7.5 which didn't work on Tiger)
If I create a new Word file, type anything and save it. Then scan with Virex 7.2 it shows this W97M/Thus.gen virus !!

Someone said I have to delete ALL Word files including the "Normal" template in MS Office folder but this would be very inconvenient for me as I have a lot of backed up files.

any suggestions ?

thanks
Pete
London
UK
_________________
Mac G4
OSX 10.4.5

[SatCure]

As a general guide I would avoid using WORD and I certainly wouldn't send a WORD document to anyone else. Send as PDF instead.

Sorry this doesn't answer your current question but, as a Mac user, I know nothing about this WORD worm.

[ex2bot]

PeteZZZ,

Welcome to MacOSX.com!

(Please forgive me if any of this is too simplistic.)

W97M/Thus.gen is a Word Macro virus. It's nothing to mess around with. First I'd check to see if your macro virus protection is on.

1. Run Microsoft Word.
2. Click on the Word Menu.
3. Click Preferences.
4. Click General from the list.
5. Look to see if "Macro virus protection" is checked. If it isn't, click the box to activate it. This will, I believe, prevent macros from running. If you depend on macros, then this is not a good thing. But if your files are infected with a virus, I'd say it's probably a good idea to enable the macro virus protection until you can fix the problem.

Now, the latest version of Virex is 7.7. You might look into upgrading to that, although if I remember correctly McAfee might have really upped the price.

If you can update Virex, it may be able to remove the virus from your Word files. I don't know. If you can't upgrade Virex, you may want to consider buying Intego's Virusbarrier.

http://www.intego.com/virusbarrier/

I don't know if Virusbarrier will be successful removing the virus from your files.

Here's how this thing works, as I understand it (and I'm not a security expert): A virus reproduces itself by attaching itself to a file on, say your hard drive. Word Macro viruses are written in Word's macro language and attach themselves to as many of your .doc files (Word document files) as they can. Every time you load one of these files into Word, it runs the macro.

(Macros are little programs that can save time. You could use a macro to do any kind of repetitive task you don't want to do over and over.) When Word runs macro that contains a virus, they usually try to copy themselves to any other documents you work on. They may also do bad things like delete files. You can, as you mentioned, infect others' documents too.

And, apparently, some of these macros will function on your Mac. I don't know if W97M/Thus.gen will do anything.

Good luck.

Doug

[b16ef8300]

check this link:

http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/local/..._Security.html