[X4U] Malware for Mac...

[Stroller]

A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away, there was an email client 
called "Outlook Express" which ran on the Windows operating system.  
Outlook Express was supplied with a web-browser called "Internet 
Explorer" which at that time was on its fourth or fifth release.

This software was published by a company called Microsoft who were 
feeling pretty confident at that time, having wiped the floor with an 
upstart called "Netscape", and who were really on a roll of adding 
features like crazy to their email / browsing suite.

Microsoft thought it'd be really cool for their users to do things like 
run Javascript applets embedded in email messages, so that the text 
"Happy Birthday" would swirl around the message window following your 
cursor, or the text of the message could be scrolled across the preview 
pane. Of course, there was an option in Outlook Express to disable this 
feature, but it was hidden away in a preferences window, and no-one 
ever got around to using it, because the feature was kinda cool the 
first time you saw it, and people didn't send you such flashy messages 
often enough for it to get annoying, and it was fun to cut out the 
javascript and use it in your own webpages.

For ages and ages and ages... or at least for several months... 
everything was sunny in the garden, until one day the Dark H4X0r of the 
East (or maybe it was the West - it was so long ago that I can't 
remember) realised that Javascript could be used to do lots of 
_interesting_ things. After the second, or maybe it was the twelfth, 
virus outbreak spread by the use of Javascript and Active Content 
(because Microsoft were so clever they allowed other kinds of programs 
to be run in messages) in email, people began to say, "who's stupid 
idea was this, anyway, to be able to execute arbitrary code without 
user intervention?"

As these events unfolded, all the Macintosh users were smug, of course. 
They were using OS9, which only ran one program at a time, and none of 
them graphically pleasing; "Ho ho," they said! "That would never happen 
on a Macintosh!"

The users of Outlook Express for Windows got frustrated, and downloaded 
patches, and after some time they all had good anti-virus software on 
their computers, so this sort of thing hardly ever happened again, 
except when they accidentally clicked on a banner advertisement, and 
then - in a hurry - on the "yes" button instead of the "no", and 
installed something like the "SearchSwift Toolbar".

For ever after the "SearchSwift Toolbar" would helpfully redirect the 
Windows users to the SearchSwift website every time they accidentally 
typed "Google.com" into the address box of their web-browser, and at 
other times when they might not already have a browser window open, it 
would helpfully open some, for who wishes to be short of interesting 
and relevant marketing information from viagra vendors and pornographic 
websites?

Windows users with children would often find that they were approached 
by SEVERAL such useful useful purchasing opportunities each day, so 
many that that their computers would slow to a crawl because, as 
everyone knows, children are unable to resist when asked: "Would you 
like to run this widget on your dashboard?".

And the Macintosh chortled some more, becau... oh, hang on... no, they 
didn't. <http://stephan.com/widgets/zaptastic/>

Stroller.