“Antivirus experts have identified new versions of three major e-mail worms and say that a ‘war’ between rival virus writers may be to blame for the rash of outbreaks in recent weeks. New versions of the Mydoom, Netsky, and Bagle have all appeared on the Internet in the last 24 hours. Antivirus researchers have uncovered text messages in two of the worms that suggest a battle is underway between virus writers, antivirus companies say,” Paul Roberts reports for IDG News Service.
Roberts reports, “Examples of Netsky.F, Bagle.K ,and Mydoom.H were isolated on Wednesday, according to antivirus company F-Secure. All three variants resemble their predecessors, which spread in e-mail messages with vague-sounding subjects using infected attachments such as .zip, .exe, or .pif files. The viruses have their own SMTP engines and harvest e-mail addresses from infected computers, which are then targeted with infected mail, antivirus companies say.”
Computers running the Macintosh operating system remain unaffected.
Full article here.
Information about switching from Windows to Mac OS X, which currently has zero (0) viruses to date, here.
Just out of curiosity, what would stop someone from writing an Applescript sending it out via email to Mac users which run a series of commands including the harvesting of email addresses from mail.app. The script then commands mail.app to send those in a new email? As I recall, an Applescript does not need to be “installed” so no admin password is required. In fact, any app can be mailed around as a trojan (which is what attached .exe files are for the Win crowd) and then hope that a few folks double click them. Again, no password required by the user.
-B
ust out of curiosity, what would stop someone from writing an Applescript sending it out via email to Mac users which run a series of commands including the harvesting of email addresses from mail.app
Not much. However, it wouldn’t be too effective at doing its thing unnoticed. Firstly, iirc, mail warns you when trying to open a script directly, so there goes the “it’s a picture of a naked women, honest” trick. Next thing would be to get to the address data and send the messages without the user knowing. Unlike in windows you can’t simply install a mini server program that opens a bunch of ports and sends a load of mails without you noticing. Of course, a determined hacker could still succeed in creating something slightly annoying, it just wouldn’t have the impact.
The thing is, while you could create a script that pisses off the average uncautious and over-curious user, maybe by deleting a load of their files, it wouldn’t get very far and would be eradicated rather easily. To make something that can spread like wildfire is just much more difficult.
There are viruses designed for Windows and some are for Mac, what’s the secret is that virus creators are more reckless than the most careless person in the world!