OS X Virus News Hoax to Sell Software
Intego, the company that began spreading information about a Mac OS X trojan horse virus piggy-backing on MP3s is nothing more than a marketing scam. You’ll notice on their homepage a large banner link at the top about an OS X security alert.
The problem is, that virus couldn’t work. At least, not in a way that other virii work. It could possibly work as a prank--where you target one specific person that you know trusts you, and thereby damage their machine. There’s zilch chance of it spreading though.
Basically, it requires that the malicious code be part of the file’s resource fork. Problem is, files that come from PC or Linux networks don’t have resource forks. And files transmitted through standard binary, like from P2P networks, BitTorrent, and email, don’t transmit resource forks. It would have to be sent with encryption, requiring deliberate action by the end user to not only somehow receive this from you, but to then decrypt and execute it.
As Dave Schoeder from the University of Wisconsin put it in this Wired article:
It is a benign proof of concept that was posted to a newsgroup. It isn’t in the wild, and can’t be spread in the wild. It’s a non-issue.
And more poigniantly, a programmer from Tennessee, Ryan Kaldari states:
They are spreading FUD (ed: fear, uncertainty, and doubt) to sell their software.
Still secure. Still safe from every malicious annoyance except for spam. And Mail.app is doing a bang up job on keeping me from seeing that.
Posted Saturday April 10, 2004 in Around the Internet by Chris Curtis
This is an older entry and as such, it may be by a guest author or contain formatting problems / extraneous code. If you notice something wrong with the entry, please use the Contact page to let me know the entry title and issue.
Yeah, it really is no worse than someone sending you a program and you executing it on your desktop. Still, it allows you have fun with MP3s.
By reedmaniac on April 10, 2004 at 11:30am link