Off_Topic: Are there OSX viruses?

[Kynan Shook]

No, there really aren't any OS X virii.  There are a few trojans 
(including the proof of concept MP3 trojan from a month or two ago - 
just showing that you could disguise an application as an MP3 file; 
also an AppleScript trojan masquerading as an Office 2004 Public Beta 
installer that runs rm -rf ~ I believe, deleting your entire home 
directory), but nothing that has been able to spread itself, AFAIK.  
Most of those things are just social engineering, nothing more.  If you 
go to a place like Network Associates (the makers of Virex) and do a 
search for Mac in their virus database, most of what comes up is Office 
Macros (for Windows, not Mac), and then a few old Mac virii.  You know, 
the ones that say "requires OS 4.1 or higher to run" and things like 
that.  There's also the old Autostart worm for the Mac, but that's 
about the most recent real threat that I can remember.
Search for yourself:
http://www.networkassociates.com/us/security/vil.htm

khyber courchesne <courchesne at onebox.com> writes:
> Hello, I just wanted to ask if there are indeed OSX viruses.  I thought
> there were none, yet we have Virex sitting over there in the corner.  
> Just
> wanted to settle a running discussion with the people in my graphics
> department:  every time something goes wrong with a machine (kernel 
> panic,
> slow file transfer, etc) somebody invariably says, "it must be a 
> virus!"
> while everyone else nods in sympathy.
>
> I know I could have posted this on lots of other more pertinent 
> discussion
> boards, but the Ti list seems to me to have the best ratio of ACTUAL 
> expert
> knowledge / probability of flame war.