[X4U] Re: Malware (Was: Consumer Reports)

[Brett Conlon]

The Autostart virus could infect floppies, ZIP Disks and CD's if they 
became infected with them.

Back in 99 under OS8.6 I think it was, we received a few Zips that had the 
Autostart virus and a few Macs became infected but it was well taken care 
of by a few free utilities on the web.

The way to disable the virus from propagating was to turn off preferences 
that would allow auto start items to run when a disk/disc was inserted.

That's the most significant virus I remember.

Coj



Randy B.Singer <randy at macattorney.com>

Zane H. Healy said:

>Have you seen a Mac virus since the days of System 6 or early System 7? 


Yes.  There was even a virus that could take advantage of Outlook Express 
under OS 8/9 and mail itself out to other computers:

The Simpsons virus:
http://vil.nai.com/vil/content/v_99102.htm
http://www.macintouch.com/simpsonsvirus.html

It isn't that there were no viruses that could infect OS 8/9, it's just 
that as floppies became less common, the vector that the majority of 
classis Mac OS viruses were designed to be propogated by, they became 
less common.

In the DealMac forums is a discussion entitled: "Have you ever caught a 
Mac Virus?"  You might like to read the comments.
http://dealmac.com/forums/read.html?f=1&i=952391&t=952391



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


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