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can mac's get trojan horses?

M

mackaveli

macrumors regular
Original poster
May 1, 2005
156
0
I know macs cant get virsues but im not familar with trojan horses?

cause i go to this basketball forums and i clicked on this link and it had pop-ups that you couldnt close so i had to quit safari.

some people said nothing happened, some people replied with its a virus, some people replied it was a trojan horse. so i just want to know.

thanks
 
Well, kind of.

See, a trojan horse is not a virus, it is not spread automatically, but rather it needs to be run by the user.

On a windows machine, if the user clicks or opens it, it may not appear opened, but it is, and they just gave themselves a trojan horse, which is annoying to remove.

On a Mac, your computer will prompt you for your admin password before running the application which is the trojan, for added protection so you won't accidently open it.

Also, you need to have a little common sense. If you download a music album that is 2 KB in size, its a trojan and not legit. If you download a movie from a P2P network and it is 3 MB in size, its not the movie. And if you download something you think from Apple thats named like "omg28xfjh3_sux)u72.app" then its not legit...

Also, trojans on Macs can't do THAT much damage since, unlike Windows, the user doesn't have direct access to everything. Trojans will like delete your iTunes library but not the files, making it very easy to just reimport them. But, like Windows, its annoying to remove without Antivirus like Virex (does .Mac still offer this?)

You need to remember, however, that this is just talking about OS X. OS 9 was less secure than Windows XP, with loads of viruses and trojans...
 
dotdotdot said:
You need to remember, however, that this is just talking about OS X. OS 9 was less secure than Windows XP, with loads of viruses and trojans...
Click to expand...

Lol. I wouldn't say there were "loads" of viruses, there were a few, but they too were uncommon.
 
well it didnt ask me for my admin password or anything,

it was just a link in safari that had many popups and then i closed it.

do you want the link lol to test it haha,

hopefully its nothing
 
thanks i'll go read them, i tried searching for trojan horse but i got so many topics.

thanks again
 
do i have a trojan horse?

whilst i was using safari, my page minimized, and a new web page opened telling me i have 12 viruses and one was a trojan horse. it had the option to remove all viruses, so i clicked it. all it did was download an empty word doccument callled 'AntiSpyWareSetup-1.exe'

i read above that macs usually ask for an admin password, which it didnt.
does this mean i have a trojan horse?
 
iflostubbsy said:
whilst i was using safari, my page minimized, and a new web page opened telling me i have 12 viruses and one was a trojan horse. it had the option to remove all viruses, so i clicked it. all it did was download an empty word doccument callled 'AntiSpyWareSetup-1.exe'

i read above that macs usually ask for an admin password, which it didnt.
does this mean i have a trojan horse?
Click to expand...

This is just a windows ad trying to get dumb windows user to install fake anti-spyware. It would install a trojan on a windows system, but on osx does nothing since osx doesn't open .exe files
 
mackaveli said:
I know macs cant get virsues but im not familar with trojan horses?
Click to expand...

1. Macs can get viruses - every platform -CAN-. You just need somebody to WRITE one.

2. And of course can Macs get Trojans, just like any other computing platform on this planet. Most popular example in recent times were the infected illegal copies of iWork 09 in the P2P networks which contained a Trojan.

Mac OS X is only relatively free of malware because it's still not a lucrative target.
 
iflostubbsy said:
whilst i was using safari, my page minimized, and a new web page opened telling me i have 12 viruses and one was a trojan horse. it had the option to remove all viruses, so i clicked it. all it did was download an empty word doccument callled 'AntiSpyWareSetup-1.exe'

i read above that macs usually ask for an admin password, which it didnt.
does this mean i have a trojan horse?
Click to expand...
No, it's a scam known as scareware. For more information, read this:
Winni said:
1. Macs can get viruses - every platform -CAN-. You just need somebody to WRITE one.
Click to expand...
You do realize you're responding to a 6 year old post, right?
 
i was just using the internet again and internet explorer came up saying i needed to report a bug too apple. it also said (kCFErrorDomainCFNetwork:302)
could this be the trojan? or is this just my internet.

and thank you for all the other posts guys!
 
iflostubbsy said:
whilst i was using safari, my page minimized, and a new web page opened telling me i have 12 viruses and one was a trojan horse. it had the option to remove all viruses, so i clicked it. all it did was download an empty word doccument callled 'AntiSpyWareSetup-1.exe'

i read above that macs usually ask for an admin password, which it didnt.
does this mean i have a trojan horse?
Click to expand...

No it means if you were on Windows and naive enough to run that app, THEN you would have had a trojan because you would have been installing it, but it was a Windows only app by the sound of it so you are safe.

Be thankful you are not on Windows, since you obviously are naive enough to click on anything.

If the web page had said "send $10,000 or your house will explode" would you have sent the money? The text about how many viruses you had was just the same, just some words to get you to click, your house wont explode and you didn't have any viruses or trojan horses and you still don't (but only because the trojan was a Windows only one).

Just give a little thought next time, dont click just because something tells you to. And be more careful of the places you browse.
 
iflostubbsy said:
whilst i was using safari, my page minimized, and a new web page opened telling me i have 12 viruses and one was a trojan horse. it had the option to remove all viruses, so i clicked it. all it did was download an empty word doccument callled 'AntiSpyWareSetup-1.exe'

i read above that macs usually ask for an admin password, which it didnt.
does this mean i have a trojan horse?
Click to expand...

If it's .exe, and you're running OS X, then you're fine.

But for future reference, if you ever come across a web page that says you have a virus and it offers to remove it.... don't click. Not to be harsh, but that's stupid and Internet 101, so now you know. ;)

iflostubbsy said:
i was just using the internet again and internet explorer came up saying i needed to report a bug too apple. it also said (kCFErrorDomainCFNetwork:302)
could this be the trojan? or is this just my internet.

and thank you for all the other posts guys!
Click to expand...

Internet Explorer?? There hasn't been an Internet Explorer for Mac since IE 5. If it mentioned a bug report to Apple and this isn't 2000, you probably don't actually mean IE.

If it's Safari, Firefox, Chrome, etc., it's likely the browser just crashed, which could be for a variety of reasons. Not enough to assume it's from any kind of malware.
 
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