Viruses for OS X?
As far as I know, there isnt a single virus for OS X. Thats gotta be some kind of record for an OS... and its been more than a year!
How easy is it to make a virus for OS X? Knowing that all core parts of the OS are safely behind a rutheless user permission system, it must be pretty hard.
How easy is it to make a virus for OS X? Knowing that all core parts of the OS are safely behind a rutheless user permission system, it must be pretty hard.
Comments
Personally I hate it when I post a topic and no one responds back. Not to say that reading requires a reply but it is nice to see someone take in intrest and making you a part of the community.
<strong>Don't look at me I am virus free.
I like that one !
As far as I know too, there isn't a single one, except for those security holes in IE.
<strong>How many viruses have OS 9 and below had?</strong><hr></blockquote>Something in the 30s... I can't recall exactly. Still, that's a far cry from the probably hundreds (thousands?) of viruses and trojans for Windows.
[ 04-28-2002: Message edited by: starfleetX ]</p>
I think 4-5 viruses for MacOS 9 is a pretty good ratio for us, wouldnt ya say?
Its the vulnerabilities that will matter more.
Most of these are irrelevant won't affect the home user as all services are disabled by default.
I imagine that the Office Macro viruses can still infect you in Office v.X, but since Microsoft wisened up to the concept of security, those have come under control. I remember, when was that, around 96-97 or so, the height of the macro viruses, when it was virtually impossible to open a Word document that *wasn't* infected?
It's remarkable that there hasn't been one yet, considering how trivial it would be to make some silly Mail.app applescript virus... not that I'm suggesting the idea!
I guess the thing is that there are so few OS X users in absolute terms, that even mailing yourself out to everyone in an OS X user's Address Book might not yield enough other OS X users to allow the infection to gain critical mass.
But then again, I guess there could be some ego based incentive to be the FIRST person to create an OS X virus. If its not going to be a hacker or user, it'll be some anti-virus maker so as to boost sales (or create a market seeing that OS X doesnt have any).
BTW, Virex is laughable... What in the HELL did they do to the OS X version? Why even bother install it if it doesnt automatically scan anything?? My local store is gonna be getting a box to the head tomorrow. Does Norton actually SCAN Aanything either? If it does, Im trading Virex in for it.
<strong>Are you offering to help out the platform by writing one, Zo?
I imagine that the Office Macro viruses can still infect you in Office v.X, </strong><hr></blockquote>I had some PC-based Office macro viruses on my pwerbook for years, and they didn't spread at all...
A side note: You'll have to actually boot into MacOS 9 to run Disinfectant; it won't run in Classic.
<strong>And by the way,of those 400 viruses for Mac more than half were associated with either IE or Outlook Express.</strong><hr></blockquote>
And the other half were Office related <img src="graemlins/lol.gif" border="0" alt="[Laughing]" />
<strong>Does Norton actually SCAN Aanything either? If it does, Im trading Virex in for it.</strong><hr></blockquote>
um, i just got the new norton antivirus and i have no idea what it does. haha! with no known X viruses, there's probably nothing to scan. it was probably a waste of money for now, but i didnt wanna get screwed later.
I personally don't even bother with anti-virus software for OS X...maybe when more Mac users have adopted it, but for now it's not very likely, at least, not until that bad-ass haXXo4r shows up.
i didn't install anti-virus apps for years.
at work?
i don't have anti-virus installed.
i give a shit about them win-boxes in my network.
and never had big problems with mac-virus'.
i only had 3 or 4.
but i would say there are more then 40000 virus' that are critical for win-users.
i keep a good backup.
\t-PC running NT on a university network
\t-Computer starts acting weird (slow, jumpy)
\t-Hard drive (40 GB) suddenly full (?!)
\t-Can't find new (35+ GB worth) files
\t-Realize network port has been turned off by Network security because of huge traffic to machine (enough to slow the whole university down for 14+ hours I found out later)
\t-Find out that someone hacked into machine, installed something like Backorifice (sp?) or something, turned it into an FTP server, and was serving pirated first run movies to the world
\t-Thankfully, they were nice enough to leave our data alone
\t-I get to reformat and reinstall everything...
It was a weird virus that I don't really remember how I received. Probably from running an infected app.
And that was in OS 8.x then...