My dad pointed a news story that came out in CNN about a Mac Virus. Like any good Mac head, I proceeded to look up the story and see what it’s all about.

Apparently this is old news. Read about it here. This was reported early this year. Nothing new to see folks.. Move along..

Technically this is not a virus per se as it does not spread wildly. It needs user intervention to actually propragate. You need to manually click the file to unarchive it, then click the the resulting file to actually launch it. Added to that, the effeect on your system is still dependent on your privileges. If you’re not an admin, it can’t deploy it’s full payload.

So for Mac users out there who are worried that hell might have frozen over and Macs are as easily infected as Windows computers, have no fear. The Mac universe is still relatively safe. You just need a little common sense in using your Macs. Don’t go to sites you don’t trust, don’t open files you didn’t ask for or not sure of its contents, etc.. Do that and you should be safe.


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3 Responses to “Yet Another Virus Story”

  1. kurt wismer Says:

    technically it IS a virus… spreading wildly and/or not requiring user intervention are not defining criteria for computer viruses - self-replication and (in most everyday circles) host program infection are and osx/leap.a fulfills both criteria…

    it is an overwriting virus and an instant messaging worm that has been seen in the wild…

  2. Juan Says:

    Well yes technically it is a virus. But in my opinion it’s more of a trojan. Due to the user intervention. according to some of the stuff I read it’s only spread via Bonjour/Rendevous. Even if it did spread through the internet you still need to manually unzip it, click the file again, etc..

    Then again, I’m not a virus expert so I’ll let users form their own opinion.

  3. kurt wismer Says:

    practically all conventional viruses require user intervention… a user has to execute the infected executable in order for the infection to spread… i think people have gotten virus and worm confused…

    as for osx/leap.a, it spreads through iChat - over the internet - making it an instant messaging worm… it also overwrites programs that were used within the past month, making it a type of file infecting virus known as an overwriting infector…

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