Linked by Thom Holwerda on Sat 4th Nov 2006 21:39 UTC
Source code for a Mac virus has gone public, a security company warned Friday, and although the original doesn't carry a malicious payload, more dangerous variants can be expected. The virus, dubbed 'OSX.Macarena' by Symantec, targets some, but not all, Mac OS X Mach-O executables. "Although methods of infecting Mach-O binaries have been publicly available for some time, this marks the first known fully functional Mach-O file infecter virus," Symantec noted in an alert to customers of its DeepSight threat network on Friday. "The source code for this virus is publicly available and as such it is possible that variants may be trivially developed to extend the virus's functionality."
Thread beginning with comment 178843
To read all comments associated with this story, please click here.
To read all comments associated with this story, please click here.
RE: Will this virus become a real problem?
by lucas on Sat 4th Nov 2006 23:51
in reply to "Will this virus become a real problem?"
Member since:2005-07-08
RE: Will this virus become a real problem?
by wirespot on Sun 5th Nov 2006 19:20
in reply to "Will this virus become a real problem?"
Member since:2006-06-21
RE[2]: Will this virus become a real problem?
by bolomkxxviii on Mon 6th Nov 2006 11:47
in reply to "RE: Will this virus become a real problem?"
Member since:2006-05-19
"Wasn't this Macarena virus created a few days ago as proof of concept? And suddenly now it's "out in the wild"? How convenient for Symantec, with their shrinking Vista user base. Pardon me if I smell a large rat here."
I was thinking the same thing, but if they lose most of the windows market to Vista's own AV package, even if they could convince every Mac user to buy their software it wouldn't wouldn't begin to make up for the windows loss. The installed base of Mac users just isn't big enough. I believe they tried the same thing with pocket PCs.
Symantec has a big problem. Maybe they are working on "proof of concepts" for phones?
Member since:
2006-10-14
Problem is, Symantec has that often warned that somehow Macs would now be under attack, that you wouldn't believe them anymore, even if they should be right this time.