“Benjamin Daines was browsing the Web when he clicked on a series of links that promised pictures of an unreleased update to his computer’s operating system. Instead, a window opened on the screen and strange commands ran as if the machine was under the control of someone – or something – else. Daines was the victim of a computer virus. Such headaches are hardly unusual on PCs running Microsoft Corp.’s Windows operating system. Daines, however, was using a Mac – an Apple Computer Inc. machine often touted as being immune to such risks,” Dan Goodin reports for The Associated Press. “He and at least one other person who clicked on the links were infected by what security experts call the first-ever virus for Mac OS X, the operating system that has shipped with every Mac sold since 2001 and has survived virtually unscathed from the onslaught of malware unleashed on the Internet in recent years.”
MacDailyNews Take: Not a virus; it’s a flaw in Safari (please see related articles below). We’d like to meet the so-called “security experts” who call this the “first-ever virus for Mac OS X,” so we could suggest they shove some, uh… job training into their busy schedules.
Goodin continues, “Apple officials point to the company’s virtually unvarnished security track record and disputed claims that Mac OS X is more susceptible to attack now than in the past. Apple plans to patch the holes reported by Ferris in the next automatic update of Mac OS X, and there have been no reports of them being exploited, spokeswoman Natalie Kerris said. She disagreed that the vulnerabilities make it possible for a criminal to run code on a targeted machine.”
Full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: There are a lot more old, recycled, and questionable ideas in the full article, such as the idea that Intel processors make the Mac more susceptible to viruses; it’s the operating system that opens a PC to viruses, not the processor (see: eWeek: Intel transition a ‘security non-issue’ for Apple Mac). Goodin’s article is an excellent compendium of FUD. Whether the author knew what he was writing about and was a willing coconspirator or whether some entity or entities sought out an ignorant “technology” writer to unknowingly disseminate their FUD is really the only question.
Fact is, Apple’s Mac platform is infinitely safer than Windows. The reason we are seeing articles like this and will see many more in the future has already been explained by our own SteveJack as recently as March 2006: Spate of recent Mac security stories signal that Microsoft, others getting nervous. And that was written even before Apple threatened to seriously disrupt the PC landscape with the Boot Camp concept (ability to run Windows apps at native speeds on a Mac). Expect the FUD to get even thicker as Apple continues taking market share in ever-increasing amounts from the OS-limited Windows box assemblers. Oh look, here’s one already, just published fresh for today: More sites rotten to Apples; Operating system no longer ‘bulletproof,’ according to report.
Mac users: turn on your firewall, don’t run your Mac as “root,” and use common sense (nobody’s giving you a million dollars via random email), and you can continue to surf the Web with relative impunity while Microsoft execs tell Windows sufferers that recovery from Windows malware becoming impossible. Supposedly, it’s better to wipe your hard drive, reinstall Windows, and rebuild your computer from scratch every so often. Can you believe that idiocy?
Macintosh. Because life’s too short.
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Related MacDailyNews articles:
Network World: Apple’s Mac OS X is significantly more secure than Windows – May 01, 2006
Minor security flaws found in Mac OS X – April 23, 2006
Microsoft: recovery from Windows malware becoming impossible; better to to wipe and rebuild – April 04, 2006
BusinessWeek: Apple should hire security czar to combat uninformed media FUD – March 09, 2006
Apple Mac remains ‘unhacked’ as University of Wisconsin’s Mac OS X Security Challenge ends – March 08, 2006
Apple Mac OS X clearly offers superior security over Microsoft Windows – March 02, 2006
Apple Mac OS X has a lot more vulnerabilities than Windows XP? – February 28, 2006
Enderle: Security vendors see Apple as next big opportunity – February 28, 2006
As Apple Mac grows in popularity, will security issues increase? – February 27, 2006
The Idiot’s Guide to Mac Viruses For Dummies 101 – February 24, 2006
Wired News: ‘Mac attack a load of crap’ – February 22, 2006
Report: Apple developing fix for automatic execution of shell scripts – February 21, 2006
Ars Technica: Fears over new Mac OS X ‘Leap-A’ trojan pointless – February 20, 2006
Atlanta Journal-Constitution asks: Is ‘Mac virus’ all just propaganda from Mac haters? – February 20, 2006
Mafiasoft: Microsoft to charge $50 per year for security service to protect Windows – February 07, 2006
eWeek: Intel transition a ‘security non-issue’ for Apple Mac – January 30, 2006
ZDNet Australia publishes latest Mac OS X security FUD article – January 26, 2006
IDC: Apple Mac 2005 U.S. market share 4% on 32% growth year over year – January 20, 2006
Analysts: Apple Mac’s 5% market share glass ceiling set to shatter in 2006 – January 09, 2006
ZDNet Australia publishes latest Mac OS X security FUD article – September 09, 2005
Joke of the month: Gartner warns of Mac OS X ‘spyware infestation’ potential – March 30, 2005
Symantec warns about Mac OS X security threat – March 21, 2005
Cant get my foot out of my mouth.
please slap me
This is the same FUD dishonesty that MickeySoft uses regularly against Linux. MS uses the Joe Goebbels approach — throw enough mud and some of it is bound to stick.
Hypo… you must be a computer newbie. Look up the definition of “computer” virus.
“nobody’s giving you a million dollars via random email”
Dagnabbit.
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“my mac crashes every 10 seconds, its filled with bugs and viruses, safari crashes without a warning, so does ichat and iweb. its full of viruses.
also i noticed safari makes text bolder than it really is.
for example, a regular verdana text looks like verdana bold on safari while it looks normal on firefox or internet explorer.
this is a huge issue especially if you design a web site.”
I suggest you check your fonts – if main applications are crashing it’s 90% a font issue (conflicting or corrupt) NOT a virus. That’s PC mentality – “if I’m crashing it must be a virus” Just because you feel a drop of water doesn’t mean there’s a thunderstorm.
Yes, I am serious. It sounds like I am running in Admin now and need to open a new account and base myself off of the new account and turn off terminal in that new account since I have no need for it. Thanks for the help
Mike,
Don’t worry much about Terminal. It’s generally not a problem. The only ways to “turn it off”, without setting up a limited “Parental Controls” account, are to delete it – BAD idea – or move it. You can hide it in plain sight just by moving it to the Applications>Utilities folder in your Admin account’s home directory. You won’t be able to run it from your user account but it will still be available should you need it. This may complicate some installs, but will add a bit of security in the process.
Seriously! Didn’t anyone notice the one guy’s name later in the article?
“Apple asked the man, Kevin FINISTERRE, to hold off publishing the code until it could patch the flaw.”
Sure looks a lot like a derivation of “Window” in a few other languages!
German – fenster
French – fenêtre
Italian – fenstra
Was this published April 1st?
MW = reported
as in, he’s a fool for having “reported” this crap!
A Google search of articles written by Dan Goodin leads to the conclusion that he is of the chicken little (the sky is falling) school of journalism. One of the posts claims that Mr. Goodin is a Mac user, thats hard to believe as every thing he writes about Apple is of a neg. nature and the few articles that I took time to read before i became bored appear to poorly researched. I guess that he’s to busy writing drivel to bother with something as trivial as the facts. No wonder the world looks down on journalist when they are as full of it as Mr. Goodin appears to be.
There’s a guy in my office who clipped this article and had it sitting on my (Mac) keyboard. We’ve been debating about Mac vs. Windows for a few weeks. He’s convinced that Mac users are fanatics who “believe-in” the Mac Religion against all common sense, and that our cult is not based on a superior user experience, but rather the smugness of being in and elitist clique.
So I said “No Kool-Aid for you!”
First off the is B.S. Mainly because he was trying to click on a “link” (executable) “that promised pictures of an unreleased update to his computer’s operating system”. He must have authorized for this to run. He must have been trying to download a hack and got took.
This thing is a virus from the information I’m getting about what it does. It uses a hole in Safari to install a virus that turns the Mac into a spam zombie for instant messages. It sends out ten IMs with a copy of the virus in it. Apparently this virus deleted some of his system files and created some new files. It says it didn’t do the full ammount of damage because the fool who wrote it made a mistake. The full code wasn’t executed. But this is a bad virus for the ammount of stuff it did to the systems.
I thin Mac users need to protect their systems like Windows users because it’s only a matter of time.
Why is this article being published today? This is old news and hit the airwaves right around Valentine’s Day. Can anyone explain that? Maybe the author was hard-up for a story.
The full article says this happened to Daines in mid-February. Wasn’t that when the Ooompa/Loompa whatever-it-was got posted in MacRumors?
If that’s the case, this is old news being ruminated like a bunch of dairy cows.
This is not BS. It doesn’t matter what he did to allow the viurs on his system the fact is it got on there. Most Windows viruses get on their because someone installs pirate software or open infected emails. This could be the same problem for a Mac. Sure you can tell them not to allow the programs to be installed but some people won’t pay attention. That’s why Windows has so many viurses, too many people don’t understand the threat and they use poor security practices. I think many Mac users are in denial.
move along folks, nothing to see here.
It was just Oompa-Loompa.
I must be doing something wrong — I’ve never had a crash on my Intel iMac, just two kernel panics both when I had the computer asleep overnight.
I feel so left out…
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I read in MacWorld that it was best described as a Trojan horse that had both virus-like and worm-like behaviors. So it’s not unreasonable to describe it as a “virus” even though that’s a simplification.
Unvarnished?! OS X’s rep has never been finished with wood finish? Untarnished.
Re: Mike Buonarroti
Oh, for heaven’s sake – the biggest problem with websites today is all the web designers who put “pretty” as a ghigher priority than _legible_. For most web pages there is no reason to specify a definitive font size – let the READER decide what size text they need – use relative font sizes. That way we can read the content, not hammer the “+ font size” key combo every time we come to a page that thought lining up fancy boxes and pictures was more important than being able to read without getting a migraine.
PDF would not have been the answer. Still isn’t. Bandwidth has nothing to do with it. PDF is for printing. Websites are (supposed) to be for screen reading.
See? I can generalize too.
It’s a hybrid. The only thing that makes it truly a virus is that it replicates itself and spreads. That’s the only thing that makes a virus a virus. Also many folk use “virus” to describe any form of malware. But in the strictest technical sense this is a Mac virus.
One of our favorite Mac writers, Paul Thurott, says that all this virus FUD is nonsense.
How about that?
http://www.internet-nexus.com/2006/05/viruses-catch-up-to-mac-or-do-they.htm
“Unvarnished?! OS X’s rep has never been finished with wood finish? Untarnished.”
Untarnished because Apple uses a secret digital blend just for brushed metal interfaces.
As a regular know-nothing all I can say is that I have owned a number of PC’s for several years and bought my first MAC last spring. I now have three IBOOK’s that have not given me a lick of trouble, period! While the Dell laptop that I kept for the legacy of software that I had to purchase has now been formatted with WIPE DRIVE three times in the last year alone. Several times in the last three years. I finally said enough is enough. Sometimes you just have to cut your losses and look for an alternative. So what if I’ve spent hundreds of dollars in software. At least it wasn’t thousands