“Thank you for helping mark the 200,000th entry into the VirusScan malware (malevolent software) detection database,” Jimmy Kuo writes for McAfee Avert Labs Blog.
“We mark this moment simply as a milestone in our continual trip to fend off the bad stuff from everyone’s machines,” Kuo writes. “It is alarming that we reach this milestone so soon after September 2004 when the count reached 100,000. Eighteen years to reach 100,000. Less than two years to double. Looking ahead, our researchers expect yet another doubling in a similar timeframe. So, 100,000 new threats in the past two years, 200,000 new threats to come in the next two years!”
“Thanks also to the cadre of dedicated anti-malware researchers who on this day added that 200,000th malware detection entry, so we may pursue our enjoyment of the Internet experience with a little less worry,” Kuo writes.
Full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: What worry? Oh, sorry, we use Macs. Happy 200,000th!
From Apple eNews, June 1, 2006:
It’s really sad that so many people have to be wary about opening email, visiting websites, chatting with presumed “buddies,” or downloading music, photos, movies or other files over the Internet.
No one should have to zealously guard their computers against spyware, viruses, trojan horses, or various other types of malware. Or run a bewildering assortment of (quickly obsolete) virus-protection apps. And no one should have to run a computer to a nearby computer store, so it can be “cleaned” on a routine basis.
Do you know why people put up with that? If their cars didn’t drive where they wanted to go; their TVs didn’t play what they wanted to watch; or their phones didn’t connect to the party they called, how long would they keep using them?
Apple provides more info online about Mac’s lack of viruses here.
By the end of 2005, there were 114,000 known viruses for PCs. In March 2006 alone, there were 850 new threats detected against Windows. Zero for Mac. While no computer connected to the Internet will ever be 100% immune from attack, Mac OS X has helped the Mac keep its clean bill of health with a superior UNIX foundation and security features that go above and beyond the norm for PCs. When you get a Mac, only your enthusiasm is contagious. – Apple’s “114,000 viruses? Not on a Mac.” webpage.
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Related MacDailyNews articles:
Sophos Security: Dump Windows, Get a Mac – July 05, 2006
16-percent of computer users are unaffected by viruses, malware because they use Apple Macs – June 15, 2005
Apple: ‘Get a Mac. Say ‘Buh-Bye’ to viruses’ – June 01, 2006
Apple Macs and viruses: Fact vs. FUD – May 26, 2006
Mossberg: Is there a virus threat for Apple Macs? – May 11, 2006
ZDNet: How many Mac OS X users affected by the last 100 viruses? None, zero, not one, not ever – August 18, 2005
Intel CEO Otellini: If you want security now, buy a Macintosh instead of a Wintel PC – May 25, 2005
Defending Windows over Mac a sign of mental illness – December 20, 2003
All 400,000 viruses for Windows, none for Mac.
Okay, I’ll be fair. 399,999 viruses for Windows, 1 for Linux, and none for Mac.
McAfee + Windows = saying Gesundheit to ebola victims.
A Trojan is in the Virus family, so technically OSX has had two (2) viruses.
Definition of Trojan Horse from Websters Dictionary Student Edition (hardcover) 2005:
– A Trojan Horse is a malicious, security-breaking program that is disguised as something benign, such as a game or even a program to search and destroy viruses! A Trojan is a type of virus which normally requires a user to perform some action before the payload can be activated.
Ok folks, update the propoganda material to 200,000 pieces of malware for Windows PC’s
Bookmark that link.
Facts:
Microsoft employees leaving in droves, Bill Gates retired, the spark is dead there, Ballmer trimming staff down.
Apple is growing, needs more buildings, putting up more stores, aligned themselves with largest chipmaker
When your green your growing, when your ripe, your rotting.
I think Bill Gates is going to give the keys to the computing world over to Steve Jobs, it’s painfully obvious now.
Steve is busy building the infastructure for world domination, grabbing all the best retail locations.
Out with the old and in with the new.
So, what does it say about a person that puts up with that type of software abuse? I mean come on.
If there is a viable alternative what does it say about a group of people and humans as a whole that refuse to stop using something as pathetic as Microsoft Windows?
It’s like an abusive relationship. The beaten wife says, “He’s a good man, I can make him better”.
I say – Why wait?
A trojan is not a virus. A virus spreads by itself, trojans don’t. End of story.
Wandering Joe,
There are many types of viruses, a Trojan is one type. I’ll post it again, straight from Webster Dictionary student edition 2005:
–A Trojan is a type of virus which normally requires a user to perform some action before the payload can be activated.
“What — me worry?” – Alfred E. Neuman
When your green your growing, when your ripe, your rotting.
Correction:
When you’re green, you’re growing; when you’re ripe, you’re rotting.
It’s Stockholm Syndrome with a touch of Cognitive Dissonance thrown in for flavor:
Defending Windows over Mac a sign of mental illness – SteveJack, MacDailyNews
Hey Webster Dumbkopf:
What’s it like to be, you know . . . WRONG?!?
The “dictionary” is not the REAL WORLD, idiot. Much less your stupid, almost meaningless “Webster” dictionary. And a “student” version at that!
Get real. The commonly accepted, real world understanding of the definition of a computer virus is something malicious that spreads by itself.
Book smarts versus street smarts. Look into it.
Tom Cruise’s meatus,
As in the real world, a Virus is not defined by how it is contracted. A Virus is defined by what it does, whether it be to a human’s immune system or a computers data.
In the real world, a Virus can be contracted in different ways, through blood, saliva, food, etc.. etc.. In the computer world, a Virus can also be contracted many different ways, through the internet, email or by simply clicking on the wrong file. It doesn’t change the fact that it is still a VIRUS. Get used to the fact that there are two types of Viruses known as Trojans for OSX.
I’m just stating the facts, accept it and move on.
Webster,
Please fill in the users here. What are these two Trojans and how do they infect or destroy Macs?
Malware is malware
It compromises the security of your computer despite the name or tricks involved.
It only takes one successful exploit to root a Mac OS X box.
Most people do not erase and install the operating system upon learning of a exploit, they assume they haven’t been compromised and just apply the patch.
Right now there are several exploits on Mac OS X that haven’t been fixed.
Sure there are 200,000 pieces of Windows malware out there, which of course makes Mac OS X look like a angel in comparison. But in actuality all the hackers have to do is use one of the few publicly known Mac OS X exploits out there and they are in our boxes just like any Windows box.
The unix basis for Mac OS X is relatively secure, it’s the botched security GUI on top that’s causing all the problems.
Why did Apple mess with Unix and create launchd? Now it’s exploitable.
Think,
I’m not denying that the Oompa Loompa was a Trojan that required user interaction. I’m saying that a Trojan is a TYPE OF VIRUS.
Much like the HIV virus requires the exchange of bodily fluids before it can infect.
A Virus is not defined by how it is spread! There are thousands of Viruses, some require user interaction some don’t.
Webster, do you know the difference between descriptive dictionaries and prescriptive ones? The supposed “definition” you cite is but the most easily understood description (for the great unwashed, moronic masses) of what is clearly NOT a virus.
Citing a supposedly “modern” dictionary in any argument today is much like asking NAMBLA to define the word “love.” That august group has no understanding of the word, and neither does “Webster” when it comes to viruses and trojans.
FYI: Adding the brand name “Webster” to a contemporary dictionary is akin to adding “Hudson” to a new car model. The G & C Merriam Company holds the copyright to the “Webster” name, but they are in NO WAY related to Noah Webster and his original work. In fact, among most aficianados of American English lexicography, the Merriam Company is considered something of an also-ran. Next time you might want to quote the OED or New American Heritage Dictionary in your argument. They’re much more highly respected.
Nicole Kidman M,
No point in arguing with mules. I’ve made my case, the information is legitimate and verifiable. Denounce the source, twist and contort the meaning to defend your beloved Apple till it suits your needs. Ignorance is bliss.
Once again, for the record.
–A TROJAN IS A TYPE OF VIRUSwhich normally requires a user to perform some action before the payload can be activated.
You are an ignoramus.
You guys are all missing the point. At the current growth rate of viruses, the implication is that Windows will become practically unusable because the anti-virus program is going to be sucking major processor time doing continual scans.
Think about it – every file that you open on a Windows machine in 2008 will have to checked against 400,000 virus definitions each and every time. I know Moore’s Law is still alive and well in terms of processor performance, but virus definitions are growing faster than Moore’s Law!
At some point, current anti-virus programs will become intolerable because there will just be too many things to guard against. Won’t it be great when that Dell dude gets a brand spanking new PC and 25% of the performance gets immediately sucked up by the anti-virus and security software?
—From Microsofts Website. They oughta know what a Virus/Trojan is better than anyone:
Just as human viruses range in severity from the 24-hour flu to the Ebola virus, computer viruses range from the mildly annoying to the downright destructive, and come in new and different forms.
Certain viruses, called Trojans (named after the fabled Trojan horse), can falsely appear as a beneficial program to coax users into downloading them. Some Trojans can even provide expected results while quietly damaging your system or other networked computers at the same time.
Link:
http://www.microsoft.com/athome/security/viruses/intro_viruses_what.mspx
Mr. Webster,
Whatis.com defines a Trojan Horse as
In computers, a Trojan horse is a program in which malicious or harmful code is contained inside apparently harmless programming or data in such a way that it can get control and do its chosen form of damage, such as ruining the file allocation table on your hard disk. In one celebrated case, a Trojan horse was a program that was supposed to find and destroy computer viruses. A Trojan horse may be widely redistributed as part of a computer virus.
which means that you are correct by these definitions. However, I had come to know “virus” as self-replicating, while “Trojan” required interaction, hence the new term “malware” to cover all cases. Now that there are so many thousands of malware codes floating around the original terms have become diluted.
Webster,
Oh my god nooooo, not the dreaded Oompa Loompa virus/trojan!!!!!
The Oompa Loompa or “OSX.Leap.A” trojan is just amazing in what it can’t do.
I’ll highlight the main points:
– You must be using Bonjour iChat, not Internet-based iChat.
– You have to pick it and download it.
– You have to decompress it.
– You have to launch it and install it.
– You have to enter the admin password for the Mac you are on in order for it to install.
For the complete article on how lame this is, go here:
http://www.macworld.com/news/2006/02/17/leapafollow/index.php
From Symantec’s web site today:
• Number of infections: 0 – 49
• Number of sites: 0 – 2
This just might cause mass world destruction, ohhhh nooo, what to do!!
(sarcasm)
So Webster got another virus?
Webster,
Dictionary.com’s definition is more accurate:
a program that appears desirable but actually contains something harmful; “the contents of a trojan can be a virus or a worm”; “when he downloaded the free game it turned out to be a trojan horse” IE: The Trojan is the vessel in which a virus can be hiding, but it doesn’t make it a virus in itself.
MDNews Magic Word: “Open” as in “Webster opened his mouth and we all saw he was eating crow.”
Think,
No need to be sensationalistic. It is widely acknowledged that Oompa Loompa is/was pretty harmless.
Just pointing out that it was a Trojan and a TROJAN IS A TYPE OF VIRUS!
Eric, I haven’t eaten any crow at all. I directly quoted a legitimate dictionary definition of a Trojan which clearly defines a Trojan as a TYPE OF VIRUS.
Why do you seem hell bent on making me out to be an enemy? These are not my words, they are from Webster’s Dictionary.
Interpret the information however you like, I don’t really care. My point is that a Trojan is widely accepted as being a type of Virus.
Of those 114,000 PC “Viruses” that Apple quotes in it’s commercial, thousands are classified as Trojans.
This arguement is all semantics. I’ll take my odds with a mac, 2 (whatever you want to call them) vs. 200,000 windows viruses. It’s not rocket science, unless you can’t do the math.
Webster . . .
YOU ARE A ONE-TRICK PONY! The word “Webster” means absolutely NOTHING as confimation of your opinion! It is NOT a blessing from the Pope, for crying out loud. It is merely a group of wishy-washy lexicographers who TODAY define the word “bad” as “good”! How does that factoid grab you, dumbass?
If “bad” equals “good” in your scheme of things–and it clearly DOES if you’re still on the “Webster” bandwagon–then I guess a trojan IS a virus.
But, then again: war is peace, freedom is slavery, etc., etc. (You are the living, breathing embodiment of George Orwell’s worst nightmare.)
don’t know if i’m wrong but i just noticed security updates for 10.3 and 10.4 but not 10.2. So when 10.5 gets released, will security updates to 10.3 end?
then I guess a trojan IS a virus.
—————-
Good, then we’re in agreement!
And now I know that the next time I need the definition of a word I’ll check the Dictionary of Nicole Kidman’s Meatus instead of Merriam Webster!:)
So I’m not clear about this, MDN. Are you saying my PC is unsafe? Not sure I’m getting the gist.
A Trojan is a malicious piece of software masqurading as a legitiment one. It requires action by a user to inflict it’s damage. It may arrive unannounced say on the back of a virus or part of a real file, but it won’t gain control without some sort of user intervention on the trojan itself. Once a trojan has gained control, it can become a virus and infect other machines on a network, depending on the level of control it gains.
A Virus is a malicious piece of software that does infect any machine it comes into contact with, without direct user intervention on the malicious software itself. It too can arrive unannounced, piggy backed on infected files. The difference between a trojan and a virus is that a trojan requires action upon the malicious file itself to work.
A virus can carry a trojan and a trojan (once it gains control) can spawn viruses.
In the story of the Trojan Horse, where the name for a trojan is taken from. A large hollow horse was given to a enemy as a gift, which they took inside their gates. Once inside, attackers emerged from the horse and destroyed the city.
So for a malicious piece of software to be considered a trojan, it requires knowning cooperation from the user on the malicious software itself. It requires the user to lower their defenses. A virus does not need a user to lower their defenses.
I hope that clears things up.
MDW: “clearly” “I can see clearly now the rain is gone” – Carley Simon
A Trojan Horse is not, in and of itself, a virus. It may contain a virus in its payload. It’s unfortunate that Websters Dictionary Student Edition has it wrong.
There are two Mac Viruses,
Tell me, is it a Virus if absolutely no real Mac users have ever had their Mac infected by it?
In other words is a proof of concept, that never infects anyone in the real world, really a virus or is it just a proof of concept?
Can an unprotected stock Mac running OS X be taken out of the box, be hooked up to broadband without a hardware firewall, and be infected by malware in 20 minutes?
How about 20 hours?
How about 20 days?
The answer is NO!
If the answer is no, then there are no viruses for the Mac OS X.
Interesting debate.
I don’t think anyone disagrees that a Trojan requires user interaction while a Virus does not.
The bigger question is whether or not a Trojan is considered part of the Virus family and should be classified as a type of Virus. My personal opinion is that yes, although a Trojan requires user interaction, it is part of the Virus family.
To add more confusion to the matter. Apple is advertising that there are 114,000 PC Viruses while it is known that a large percentage of those are actually Trojans and other types of malware. At the same time, Apple says that there are zero Viruses for the Mac when there are clearly two known and documented Trojans.
In reading some of Webster’s posts, i see she is just a disinformation-spreading-Troll. Ignore her.
Trevor: I think the Wikipedia answers your question well:
“Trojan horse programs cannot operate autonomously, in contrast to some other types of malware, like viruses or worms. Just as the Greeks needed the Trojans to bring the horse inside for their plan to work, Trojan horse programs depend on actions by the intended victims. As such, if trojans replicate and even distribute themselves, each new victim must run the program/trojan. Therefore their virulence is of a different nature, depending on successful implementation of social engineering concepts rather than flaws in a computer system’s security design or configuration.”
Sorry, MDN munged the link. Try this Wikipedia link instead.
Be bery bery careful of trojan. trojan made of rubber. rubber break. Chico know, rubber break.
-Chico Escuela
Big AI,
Very good, another piece of advice users forget.
USAToday did an article on this back on 11-29-2004.
“Unprotected PCs can get hijacked within minutes of accessing the Internet”
Full article:
http://www.usatoday.com/money/industries/technology/2004-11-29-honeypot_x.htm
Each PC was connected to the Internet via a broadband DSL connection and monitored for two weeks in September. Break-in attempts began immediately and continued at a constant and high level: an average of 341 per hour against the Windows XP machine with no firewall or recent security patches, 339 per hour against the Apple Macintosh and 61 per hour against the Windows Small Business Server. Each was sold without an activated firewall.
Less than four minutes from start of the test, an intruder breaks into Windows XP SP1.
There were no successful compromises of the Macintosh.
A 2 week test, that’s 336 hours.
Thanks for the link Rainy Day, However, even the wikipedia page still leaves some confusion. Especially the sentence “Therefore their virulence is of a different nature.”. They are referring to a Trojan as a type of viri, which would lead me to believe that a Trojan is a part of the Virus family.
And reading further down on the Wikipedia page comes this paragraph:
Trojan Horse viruses can cause a great deal of damage to a personal computer but even more damaging is what they can do to a business, particularly a small business that usually does not have the same virus protection capabilities as a large business. Since a Trojan Horse virus is hidden it is harder to protect yourself or your company from them but there are things that you can do.
Let us acquiesce to the heavily disputed “fact” that there are 2 known Trojans out there for a Mac. If current trends hold true, then in 2008 the Mac OS will be 100,000 times safer than Vista with its projected 200,000 viruses/Trojans.
I was about to make an analogy here, but it really isn’t necessary. It should be blatantly obvious to even the simplest of morons that choosing between any two things where one is 100,000 times more likely to cause problems than the other is no real choice at all.
But, for those of you still curious, here are a few examples of things with a 1:100,000 ratio. Which would you rather do…?
Eat 1 inch of taffy or eat 1.58 miles of taffy?
Carpet a 1 square yard closet or carpet 20 football fields (…or 5 city blocks)?
Walk 1 foot or walk nearly 19 miles?
Jog 1 mile or jog around the Earth 4 times?
Toss a paperclip (1 gram) at your coworker’s head or throw your stocky 220 pound boss the same distance?
Wait 1 minute for your computer to boot up or wait 69.4 days?
Find a dollar on the ground or find a 36 foot stack of dollar bills (by the way, it would weigh as much as your 220 lb boss)?
Last, but not least…
Lift a gallon of milk (8 lbs) onto the kitchen counter or lift a fueled C5 Galaxy cargo plane with a full load of two M1-A1 Abrams battle tanks and 73 soldiers (400 tons total) onto the kitchen counter? [ photos at http://www.theaviationzone.com/images/html/galaxy/page2.asp ]
Don’t allow Microsoft to downplay the size of this problem; 100,000 of anything is a lot!
The fact that someone mislabel a trojan as a virus does not make it more correct.
Trojan programs CONTAIN malware, they are not per se the malicious program. A trojan is a legitimate-looking program that contains malicious code.
On the net you may find correct definitions as well as incorrect ones that call virus everything, even saying “a worm is a kind of virus”.
Just do on google: “define: trojan” and you’ll get correct and incorrect definitions.
During Galileo time it was well written in every textbook that the Earth was at the center and the Sun revolved around it. It did not make it more correct then as it does not make it correct labeling a trojan program “a virus” per se. It is not the virus, it is the vector.
It is as silly and uninformed and imprecise and ignorant to say that the Anopheles is the cause of Malaria. It is not, it is the vector of the genus Plasmodium that causes Malaria.
People say the Anophele causes Malaria which is wrong, but ignorance is bliss and most do not even know about Plasmodium.
BTW, there are kind of Anopheles that DO NOT carry the Plasmodium.
Webster is just part of the majority who believe a trojan is a virus: some even write on the internet and on sites.
Others, like the Princeton’s Wordnet get it right:
Trojan: a program that appears desirable but actually contains something harmful; “the contents of a trojan can be a virus or a worm”;
Can we put the case to rest now? Scarcely informed people call every malicious software a virus. Little informed ones know various kind of malware but still call them all collectively “virus”.
More informed ones know the kinds and their differences: to them a virus is a virus is a virus. Period. Other kinds of malware that do not satisfy all features of a virus are malware of other kinds.
Calling everything a virus just tell this last category of people the level of ignorance you have on the matter: You know who you are.
Trevor, the phrase “Trojan Horse viruses” means different things to different categories of people described in my previous post.
You might – on first categories – understand it as “SEEE? Told you, a Trojan is a virus”. The last category of people smiles and reads it correctly as “the virus that is carried by a Trojan Horse program”.
The virus is hidden in that it might come to you by a legitimate operation like installing a program you truly want to install. But doing that opens the door to the virus it contains.
Usually, one put a virus in a trojan in that the author has not found a way to easily penetrate its target or because the goal is to infect without raising suspicions.p
GmJm
Gimmie the 36 foot stack of dollars! Maybe I can buy a MacBook Pro with it!
Princeton’s Wordnet get it right:
Trojan: a program that appears desirable but actually contains something harmful; “the contents of a trojan can be a virus or a worm”;
Welcome back Seahawk! As usual pearls of wisdom.
Princeton guys correctly differentiate Anopheles from Plasmodium (I knew the mosquito was the vector of something but did not know the name). Smart guys are at Princeton.
Trevor: While you may be correct in your inference that “virulence” and “virus” share a common root, according to the Oxford dictionary, the word “virulence” simply means “extremely severe or harmful in its effects.” When used to refer to a pathogen, especially a virus, it simply means “highly infective.”
By the way, the word “viri” means “men.” The plural of “virus” is “viruses.”
Webster’s : the acme of all that is learned and sublime.
Very good points, Seahawk. I am often irked by people calling dolphins or whales “fish,” or chimpanzees or other apes “monkeys,” or confusing caps with hats (or vice versa), etc. Words have meaning, and when we use them carelessly, we dilute their meaning and make language even more ambiguous than it already is.
Seahawk, I understand the definition of a Trojan and how it does damage.
My question is, Is a Trojan part of the Virus family and therefore accurate to be considered of the Virus family.
So far, these fairly reputable sources have claimed in one way or another that a Trojan is in fact a type of virus, while many Mac users deny it.
1. Websters Dictionary defines a Trojan as ” A type of virus which normally requires a user to perform some action before the payload can be activated.
2. Wiikipedia calls a Trojan a type of virulence and refers to them as Trojan Horse viruses on the same page..
3. Microsofts Website says “Certain viruses, called Trojans (named after the fabled Trojan horse), can falsely appear as a beneficial program to coax users into downloading them. Some Trojans can even provide expected results while quietly damaging your system or other networked computers at the same time.
4. Apple lumps all 114,000 known PC viruses, trojans and worms and malware together as being just “Viruses,” yet denies that the two OSX trojans are “Viruses.”
5. Walt Mossberg recently said “There are two known Mac OSX Viruses.”
So basically, I understand that a Trojan requires user interaction to spread, but is a Trojan a type of virus and is it considered to be part of the virus family?
Trevor: Strictly speaking, no, Trojan Horse programs are not, by definition, viruses. What blurs the lines is the fact that Trojan Horse programs may contain viruses, or they themselves may be embedded within a virus.
The definition of a Trojan Horse program has already been covered in this thread. The definition of a virus is “a self-replicating computer program that spreads by inserting copies of itself into other executable code or documents.”
Clearly a single program can have both characteristics, thus it may be both a virus and a Trojan Horse program (hence the term “Trojan Horse virus”). But Tojan Horse programs are not, by definition (as you are inquiring), a type (or subset) of virus.
PS: A Trojan cannot be “a type of virulence” because “virulence” is an adjective.
Just because something is virulent does not make it a virus. It simply means it is extremely severe or harmful.
How many geeks does it take to argue about the meaning of ‘trojan’?
Thanks Rainy Day,
So if the Oompa Loompa Trojan contained a virus that spread once opened. Isn’t it safe to say that OSX has had at least one known virus?
And furthermore, isn’t Apple being deceitful in it’s marketing by saying “PCs have 114,000 viruses, Macs have zero. When in fact, thosusands of those Viruses are actually trojans that may not contain viruses, and at least one Mac Trojan (Oompa Loompa) did in fact contain an OSX virus?
Wait a miinute… Thank you?
Wow… They’re putting it right out there, aren’t they? Way to be honest. They may as well just say, “We’d like to take a moment to show our appreciation to all the virus writers out there, for keeping us in business.”
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Trevor–
Oompa Loompa is not able to self-propagate. In other words, it is simply a program. It does what it was designed to do, it just doesn’t market itself.
Trevor: Oompa Loompa is a virus-wanna-be, i’ll grant you, because it tries to spread itself (which is virus-like behavior). However it doesn’t meet the definition of a virus because it always requires operator consent to “infect” a system (i.e. it always behaves like a Trojan Horse program).
As to your other question, is Apple being disingenuous or applying a double standard?, it’s hard to say. The article above says that there are over 200,000 pieces of malware for Windoze; Apple only claims there are 114,000 viruses. While i do not recall the source for Apple’s figure offhand, i do know they were citing a statistic from a third party. Numerically, it is possible that there are 114,000 viruses and 86,000 other kinds of non-virus malware.
The truth is, after you run out of fingers and toes to count on, nobody knows for sure how many pieces of malware there are for a platform, much less exactly which kind they are. But what we do know is there is a whole boatload of them.
Trevor, the existence of this very same thread is the reason why Apple calls virus all malware out there exploiting flaws in Windows OS. The majority of people understands them as virus although it dilutes the real meaning and the real threat as well. In this case, as this thread also has demonstrated, for general user it is a matter of hair splitting, or geek mental masturbation.
For security purposes, distinction is useful in that different kind of malware require different type of precautions.
Conversely, Apple could say malware. After all, Windows is as well affected by spyware, bots, keyloggers that are certainly not virus but are malware and harmful to have running in the backstage without users being aware of it.
A trojan horse program is not a virus per se. I do not understand the term some website or bloggers have created Virus Family. Usually the term family is used for a same virus/worm and its variations.
A trojan horse program could also contain a bot, a keylogger, spyware, remote control system calls to turn the PC into a zombie at will, etc.
For the user, ultimately, your system has been *infected* and from the spread of this term in the common language then every started to be called a virus.
The reason in Mac threads people really point out the difference lies on the fact that a true virus – that replicated and spreads without user intervention – is a reflection of a more dangerous flaw wrt to malware needing social-fishing solutions and user intervention.
It is a matter of pointing out the levels of danger and criticality of the varios malware out there. Saying “Macs had two virus already so it is not different than Windows, hence it is just a matter of time or matter of getting in the right radars” is in a way just the same old FUD of ‘security by obscurity’.
Does it really matter? The only reason there aren’t viruses for macs isn’t because they are so much better than pc’s, it’s because there aren’t enough users and virus creators don’t waste their time making a virus for such a small percentage of people. As it stands macs are currently virus free, but as the number of users increases, there will be viruses created for the mac and it will be the same story as pc’s.
A trojan is something that claims to be one thing but is another, usually bad.
A virus is something that replicates.
Those are the most basic definitions. But it allows for intersection. So a particular trojan can be a virus. A particular virus can be a trojan.
That is for common use. (Well, at a slightly higher level than “Everything bad that happens to a computer is a virus.” Webster, though, is at this “everything is a virus” level. And to the general public, that’s how they use the word. And that’s Webster’s audience.)
For security industry use, we do away with the intersection and say that a trojan does not spread.
Note, in this definition, a worm is a subclass of virus. A worm spreads as a full copy of itself, generally over a network.