[X4U] Consumer Reports

[Randy B.Singer]

Ted Burton said:

>The only virus/worm I've heard of that have anything at all to do 
>with the MacOS X are those that use Microsoft Office script languages 
>to bung up Microsoft Office documents.

There are no viruses that infect OS X specifically.  But there is malware 
that is at least minimally (very minimally) relevant to users of OS X.

There are Microsoft macro viruses out there. Both for Word and Excel. 
Some of these are very malicious.

Trojans are potentially very destructive, though they are not 
self-propagating. 

Trojans for OS X include Opener/Renepo, the WordInstaller Trojan, 
MacCowHand, and MP3/Concept. MP3/Concept does not exist in the wild as 
anything other than a proof-of-concept, as far as anyone can tell. The 
others are rare, but they do exist:
http://www.sophos.com/virusinfo/analyses/maccowhanda.html
http://www.macintouch.com/opener02.html
http://securityresponse.symantec.com/avcenter/venc/data/macos.mw2004.trojan
.htm
http://www.macworld.co.uk/news/index.cfm?NewsID=8406
http://www.intego.com/news/pr41.asp
http://www.securityfocus.com/archive/1/395107/2005-04-03/2005-04-09/0

There are a number of OS 8/9 viruses still around, and almost all of them 
can also infect Classic running in OS X.  But they are quite rare at this 
point because almost all of them were designed to propagate via the 
sharing of floppies, which no one uses anymore.  

And while, IMHO, the possibility of a Mac acting successfully as a 
carrier of a Windows virus to infect other Windows users is miniscule, it 
is still possible.  Some mac users consider Windows viruses received as 
e-mail attachments to be "infections" because they share files with 
Windows users.

So, are there "viruses" for OS X?  Not specifically, no.  But there are 
viruses, or at least "malware", that are relevant to OS X.  Even if that 
relevance is incredibly marginal.






Randy B. Singer
Co-Author of: The Macintosh Bible (4th, 5th and 6th editions)

Routine OS X Maintenance and Generic Troubleshooting
http://www.macattorney.com/ts.html