Viruses On Os X

This was a big story on my local news last night. lol

I waited to see how they reported it and it was the typical "the sky is falling". "All you Mac users that thought you were safe......blah blah blah" They ran various clips of the Mac plant....packing those older iMacs, the little apple shaped colored ones. lol Then all they said is affects users of iChat, if you get a link to a file called (can't recall), dont open it.....next story.

But you know, the less educated part of the community was on the phone the next day screaming at whoever sold them that vulnerable machine. lol
 
Possibly the first true virus... I've been having troubles with my HD for a few days now. Today finally, it reached the point of no return... where files started to get deleted, I can't edit my HD or accounts, it seems hopeless. I have no idea what's going on... I've got to make another quick thread about it. Read more there.
 
Doubtful -- these "viruses" are simply proofs-of-concept. One is malicious in the sense that it has a bug in the virus code that causes certain applications not to launch.

You'd also know you got one of these viruses because you would have to download a certain file, double-click it, and possibly authenticate.
 
Trip said:
Possibly the first true virus... I've been having troubles with my HD for a few days now. Today finally, it reached the point of no return... where files started to get deleted, I can't edit my HD or accounts, it seems hopeless. I have no idea what's going on... I've got to make another quick thread about it. Read more there.
Click to expand...

i suspect you are running out of space. there are no virus' on the Mac.
 
Well, technically, there are two viruses on the Mac now, but neither work correctly.

Also, as of now, you cannot be mysteriously and unwittingly infected with a virus -- these viruses require user interaction in the form of clicking, double-clicking, authenticating, or a number of other user actions in order to try to do any damage (and they don't do any meaningful damage anyway).

The point is: you can't "get" infected. You must infect yourself presently by direct user interation with these viruses. You'd know if you got infected the minute you got infected. It's not going to be a situation where your computer starts to act a little funky one day... you'll know it the minute it happens.
 
If you have installed Apple's "Security Update 2006-001 PPC" you are covered. It isn't much of a worm anyway and according the Symantec, Sophos, and others the risk was very very low, its spread was minimal (I believe 2 sites), and ease of removal was a piece of cake.
 
Is it possible to migrate a virus from OS9 to OSX when data transferring?
(please refer to my posting for macOSXsystems-it will show my myriad of symptoms that may have come from my imac.OS9-to-ibkG3.OSX1.-to-ibkG4.OSX3.-to-ibkG4.OSX4.)
-lbhammond
 
I've been using Macs since 1987 and I've never seen a Mac OS9 virus. The chances of acquiring one now are infinitesimally small. It just won't happen. And they won't run on OSX. I doubt they'll even run under Classic.
 
all this talk of viruses...the only virus like activity ive ever had was from once being on shithouse proxy server windoze based, that screwed with all my video settings and stuff
 
I seem to be gettting another message from appletalk.com.au
they have a number of 'headlines' regarding virus attacks and hacking into Mac OS X.
>>Even Matt Drudge got into the game, with headlines on his heavily-trafficked Drudge Report Web site that screamed: "Two Viruses Target Apple's Macintosh."<<
>> One piece of malicious software was dubbed Leap-A. It masqueraded as Jpeg images of screen shots of the next version of Mac OS X.<<
>>The other one, known as OSX.Inqtana.A, was designed to spread through a vulnerability in Bluetooth wireless technology that was patched by Apple eight months ago.<<
>>A third vulnerability -- this one a potential chink in the armor, rather than a piece of naughty software -- was disclosed early this week. Apple's Safari Web browser has a feature that lets you open downloaded files that are considered safe as soon as the download is complete>>

According to the Hacker 'gwerdna', the hacked Mac could have been better protected, but it would not have stopped him because he exploited a vulnerability that has not yet been made public or patched by Apple.
 
hm. that's from last week, i believe. we discussed this in another thread, and it's been discussed widely. "gwerdna" (Andrew G) had local access. It's like inviting a thief into your house and showing him where the safe is, then leaving him alone with all his tools. So: Forget about it.
 
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.
 
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.
 
Stinz12 said:
When I was at the mac store getting my ibook G4 I was assured that there would be no viruses on it.
Click to expand...

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.
 
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
 
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.
 
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
 
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