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First Mac Trojan!

post #1 of 13
5/17/04 at 1:43am
Thread Starter 
Now Mac users have something in common with wintel users.


http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1759,1591850,00.asp
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post #2 of 13
5/17/04 at 2:08am
That has always been the one luxury that we Mac owners haven't had to deal with alot. If Macintosh was as popular as Windows or had a 40% penetration in the market we would have more problems.
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post #3 of 13
5/17/04 at 4:03am
I'm kind of perplexed that people are just now discovering this so-called "security flaw". Because of Mac OS X's retention of file/creator types for the benefit of Mac OS 9/Classic Environment users, it has long been a simple matter to disguise an application as some other file type (such as a Word document). Slap on the appropriate icon, change the extension, protect the resource fork in a StuffIt archive, and let social engineering take over (i.e. name it "aniston_nude_photo.jpg" and someone is bound to get curious and click on it).

In reality, the significance of this is over-rated. What we have here is an unsubstantiated report of a single person (read: idiot) who believed that he had downloaded a public beta of Office 2004 (in a 108 KB file, no less!), but instead ran a script that wiped out his Home directory. If true, what a dumbass. If untrue, then shame on Macworld Magazine and Intego for fearmongering.

In any case, people should be practicing due diligence, anyway. That is, refraining from downloading or executing applications of dubious reputation, throwing away unsolicited/suspicious e-mail attachments, and creating good backups of your personal data. Using a bit of brainpower, everybody could avoid crap like this. (Unfortunately, considering that this has been going on for a decade (in the Windows world), it shows that people are inherently dumb and it's unlikely to every stop. )

D.
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post #4 of 13
5/17/04 at 4:16am
No big deal, all it does is run a command that erases your home directory, in this case "rm -rf ~". Every other flavour of *nix out there allows you to run that command, so they're all "vulnerable" as well. Windows allows you to do even worse, to erase files ANYWHERE on the hard drive, even system files (in XP, rd /s /q c: will try to erase everything on the C: drive).

Basically, be smart. If a 180KB file claims to be a public beta of Microsoft Word, I think it's pretty obvious. Second, he got it off Limewire. Wow, what a brilliant place to look for public betas from Microsoft.
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post #5 of 13
5/17/04 at 4:26am
So... it's essentially a gussied-up .bat file, for Macs.

And BTW, it'd be rm -rf /~ *, I think. Not positive. Gentoo isn't working quite right for me currently; rather, x.org isn't.

(-:Stephonovich:-)
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post #6 of 13
5/17/04 at 4:34am
Nope, rm -rf ~. That will erase everything within and underneath the ~ directory (the -r recursive tag), without any user intervention (the -f force tag).

/~ should result in "no such file of directory".

Quote:
-bash: cd: /~: No such file or directory
Replace ~ with / and it will try to erase everything on the hard drive. However in order to access anything outside your home directory you need root access so unless the script asks you for a password (suspicious!) the amount of damage this can do is limited to your own home folder.
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post #7 of 13
5/17/04 at 4:51am
Yeah, most Linux users are intelligent enough to figure out that if your computer suddenly asks for the root password, it's likely not normal Average Windows user, OTOH... "LOOK! Someone in Nigeria wants to give me millions!"

Oh, thanks for the correction. As I said, I wasn't sure.

(-:Stephonovich:-)
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post #8 of 13
5/17/04 at 5:33am
"the Mac is mainly used by professionals who have more important things to do than creating viruses. So we do not expect Mac OS to be a platform for future virus development."

After a stupid & ignorant public statement like this, I'm betting the Mac Os will now surely be targeted by virus makers
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post #9 of 13
5/17/04 at 5:49am
Considering Mac OS is based on Unix, I'm having trouble seeing their argument. Sure, there's not that many virii written for Unix, but there are some, and there will always be a few.

(-:Stephonovich:-)
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post #10 of 13
5/17/04 at 11:24am
Shoulda stuck with 9 (like me). I dreaded OSX from the getgo. "Okay, now we're writing a new operating system that does exactly the same things your old one does, only the programs you bought won't run on it anymore"
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post #11 of 13
5/17/04 at 11:26am
Quote:
Originally Posted by chadbang
Shoulda stuck with 9 (like me). I dreaded OSX from the getgo. "Okay, now we're writing a new operating system that does exactly the same things your old one does, only the programs you bought won't run on it anymore"
You're surely joking..
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post #12 of 13
5/17/04 at 11:32am
This doesn't even qualify as a Trojan as far as I'm concerned. Any idiot on any platform who dowloads software from a ptp network is vulnerable to this kind of thing.

Real viruses will have a hard time erupting on Unix-based platforms like OS X because the architecture builds a wall between admin tasks and user tasks, unlike Windows and OS 9.

Is it impossible to launch an OS X virus? Of course not. But it's a lot harder to do, and probably much easier to block against.

--Chris
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post #13 of 13
5/17/04 at 11:36am
I've been on macs for almost 20 years. I'm still running 9 (although 8.6 was the best Mac system. I'm sorry I upgraded sometimes just to run iTunes and iMovie - especially as iMovie throughly sucks anyway. I'll stick with Adobe Premiere and After Effects) and I'm sure millions of mac users are. OSX looks all pretty and snazzy, but let me know what it does better at running: Internet Explorer. Cinema 4D, Microsoft Word, Itunes, Adobe Premiere and After Effects, Final Draft, Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Illustrator, Quark and Digital Performer, and I'll consider spending $5,000 to switch over to some idiotic-looking jumping menu bar. And BTW, none of these programs (save for Internet Explorer, which doesn't really bother me, anyway, as that's my time-waster program ) has ever crashed being used under OS9. Tell me how you improve the stability on that?


Here's an article, exactly a year old, stating why only 1 in 4 mac users could access the itunes store. Because an estimated 60-65% of mac users are still running OS9. Let's get real. How many people are still using Windows 98? My office is.

http://www.macdailynews.com/comments.php?id=P1022_0_1_0

I can't find a newer article. But I'd imagine the number of people still using OS9 is a good 25% or better. Perhaps even more.
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