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Is there a Mac virus?

joelovesapple

joelovesapple

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Sep 25, 2006
773
56
UK
This friend of ours tells me whilst sorting out a problem with our Windows machine that there has been a Mac Virus since January.

Is this true, or just bullcrap?


I for one don't believe this is true. I would know by now if there was. I've heard of the various attempts and false claims already.

I just want to be clear on this, because our 'friend' is very close to parting with this body right now.:mad:
 
joelovesapple said:
This friend of ours tells me whilst sorting out a problem with our Windows machine that there has been a Mac Virus since January.

Is this true, or just bullcrap?


I for one don't believe this is true. I would know by now if there was. I've heard of the various attempts and false claims already.

I just want to be clear on this, because our 'friend' is very close to parting with this body right now.:mad:
Click to expand...

There are no viruses for Macs, I think there might be a couple Trojan Horses that people confuse with Viruses though. A Virus can spread without the user doing anything, it just propagates on its own. While with a Trojan Horse, the user has to have adminstrative privileges and put their account name and password in for it to run. Two completely different things. So no, there are no viruses for Macs.
 
wwooden said:
There are no viruses for Macs, I think there might be a couple Trojan Horses that people confuse with Viruses though. A Virus can spread without the user doing anything, it just propagates on its own. While with a Trojan Horse, the user has to have adminstrative privileges and put their account name and password in for it to run. Two completely different things. So no, there are no viruses for Macs.
Click to expand...


The points raised here are exactly what I thought, but just couldn't place them in my mind at the right time:rolleyes: .

Thanks very much for clearing that up. What about denial-of-service attacks? And what issues did the X.4.9 update fix? Did they fix any of the vulnerabilities in January?

Also, apologies for coming across a stupid zealotous git.:eek:
 
Finally I am going to get an imac. I hope I can wait until Santa Rosa & Leopard get here, but my old 1999 Dell is on its last legs.

One major problem I have is that I have a huge archive of WordPerfect stuff. I love WordPerfect and I hate Word. Unless I am going to give up a bunch of good stuff that I have, I think I am going to have to go with Parallels or Boot Camp. I think that means that I am going to have to run Norton or something like it. I don't want to do that, but I don't want a buggy machine either.

In addition, do you guys run any antivirus, antiTrogan, antipopup, etc. stuff and if so, what do you run?

I welcome any suggestions that any of you have.

Thanks.
 
Manfred said:
Finally I am going to get an imac. I hope I can wait until Santa Rosa & Leopard get here, but my old 1999 Dell is on its last legs.

One major problem I have is that I have a huge archive of WordPerfect stuff. I love WordPerfect and I hate Word. Unless I am going to give up a bunch of good stuff that I have, I think I am going to have to go with Parallels or Boot Camp. I think that means that I am going to have to run Norton or something like it. I don't want to do that, but I don't want a buggy machine either.

In addition, do you guys run any antivirus, antiTrogan, antipopup, etc. stuff and if so, what do you run?

I welcome any suggestions that any of you have.

Thanks.
Click to expand...

Welcome to Mac. First bit of help, when you have a question such as this, do a forum search first to see if someone has already posted the info you need.

If you can't find anything, then start a new thread with your question as the title. Just adding your question to the end of an unrelated thread will make it harder for people to help you.

As for your Wordperfect question, I have no idea, but I'm sure someone here can help you.
 
No anti trojan or anti popup software running here. Safari does a good enough job of blocking popups for me. And even those that do come through, are only mild nuisances. No risk of downloading spyware or viruses, which I think is the bigger risk of popups for most people.

Corel WordPerfect for Mac version 3.5 is freely available, but is very old and runs in Classic mode -- I don't think modern Macs can do Classic anymore, so that won't help you much I'm afraid.
 
http://www.macvirus.org/

pretty old and not up to date, but answer is clear, there was OSX virus. but obvious not in large numbers. I actually believe in logic and science, and I don't believe there is any OS that can be virus free, just a matter about if anybody interested in making them based on their calculation of balance of effort/profit.
 
clevin said:
http://www.macvirus.org/

pretty old and not up to date, but answer is clear, there was OSX virus. but obvious not in large numbers. I actually believe in logic and science, and I don't believe there is any OS that can be virus free, just a matter about if anybody interested in making them based on their calculation of balance of effort/profit.
Click to expand...

That is what i believe too. Mac OSX is not virus protected. It has had one virus that has been isolated before. The reason that there are many on the Windows is that many more people use it and are adept at programming nd creating them for that OS
 
®îçhå®? said:
The reason that there are many on the Windows is that many more people use it and are adept at programming nd creating them for that OS
Click to expand...
So, you're saying there aren't any Mac OS X viruses (other than that one) because nobody is adept enough to create one? Hmm, I actually am gonna have to agree with you on this! :D
 
I could have sworn it was more than one, but nonetheless, I thought that there were several viruses for previous versions of OS X, but they have all been patched by Apple, and their OS is getting more and more secure with every update, making it harder and harder to break the OS.

Patching OS X is easy for Apple, as they already have a solid security base to work on (Unix).

However, it's different for Microsoft. They might as well be patching thin air all the time their OS is called Windows...
 
joelovesapple said:
This friend of ours tells me whilst sorting out a problem with our Windows machine that there has been a Mac Virus since January.
Click to expand...

-joelovesapple

At the risk of repeating what others have already said, there are no OS X virii "In the wild" (key phrase). Heck, there have only been a few trojans as well, and they did little damage.

Yes, there are virii for OS X, but they are "in the lab" and like the trojans, only work under very specific circumstances, one being the virus has to be planted on an unmasked local network with the target machine - again, limiting damage and the desire to write said virus.

You have nothing to worry about. But watch the news just in case.

Killyp said:
...Microsoft. They might as well be patching thin air all the time their OS is called Windows...
Click to expand...

Oh, very nice! :D
 
Until there's a serious threat that requires third-party (or Apple) intervention, I will simply not worry about such things.
 
wwooden said:
There are no viruses for Macs, I think there might be a couple Trojan Horses that people confuse with Viruses though. A Virus can spread without the user doing anything, it just propagates on its own. While with a Trojan Horse, the user has to have adminstrative privileges and put their account name and password in for it to run. Two completely different things. So no, there are no viruses for Macs.
Click to expand...

Should I then use my macbook as a user and not administrator?

Like should I have a root account I use to maintain the system and a personal account for me daily use?

[Edit] Actually I just did a search and the common wisdom is that it is ok to use an account with admin priviledges for daily use as it has less authority then the root account (where the real power lies, and which is disabled by default).
 
djbrickhouse said:
Should I then use my macbook as a user and not administrator?

Like should I have a root account I use to maintain the system and a personal account for me daily use?
Click to expand...

Yes, you should. Most people don't, and you'll probably be okay if you don't, but it's always a better idea to use an account with less privileges, if possible.
 
bartelby said:
It's an old variation of Viri. Which in itself is an old alternative to Viruses.
Click to expand...
In the English language, the normal plural of virus is viruses. This form of the plural is correct, and used most frequently, both when referring to a biological virus and when referring to a computer virus. The forms viri and virii are also used as a plural, although less frequently. There is disagreement among users of the Internet over whether these forms should be considered correct. No reputable printed dictionary includes them as correct forms. -Wiki

OS X Dictionary has no entry for it.

It's not a word as far as I'm concerned.

</off-topic>
 
7 results for: Viri
Displaying 1 best match. Browse all 7 results below.

View results from: Dictionary | Thesaurus | Encyclopedia | All Reference | the Web
Plural of virus
Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia - Cite This Source

In the English language, the standard plural of virus is viruses. This is the most frequently occurring form of the plural, and refers to both a biological virus and a computer virus.

The less frequent variations viri and virii are virtually unknown in edited prose, and no major dictionary recognizes them as alternative forms. Their occurrence can be variously attributed to hypercorrection formed by analogy to Latin plurals such as radii; idiosyncratic use as jargon among a group, such as computer hackers; and deliberate word play, such as on BBSs (see, e.g.: leet).

To complicate matters further, viri is already used in Latin as the plural of vir, meaning "man" (thus making viri mean "men").
Click to expand...
Dictionary.com
 
joelovesapple said:
And what issues did the X.4.9 update fix? Did they fix any of the vulnerabilities in January?o
Click to expand...

Vulnerability patches come out like every few months. That's nothing to get worried about.

Manfred said:
In addition, do you guys run any antivirus, antiTrogan, antipopup, etc. stuff and if so, what do you run?
Click to expand...

Iew no. Waste of system resources at this time.

notjustjay said:
Corel WordPerfect for Mac version 3.5 is freely available, but is very old and runs in Classic mode -- I don't think modern Macs can do Classic anymore, so that won't help you much I'm afraid.
Click to expand...

Correct, it will not run on any current Mac.

matttrick said:
i use no antivirus/popup software on my pc either and i never have problems.
Click to expand...

Sure...

clevin said:
http://www.macvirus.org/

pretty old and not up to date, but answer is clear, there was OSX virus. but obvious not in large numbers. I actually believe in logic and science, and I don't believe there is any OS that can be virus free, just a matter about if anybody interested in making them based on their calculation of balance of effort/profit.
Click to expand...

That was not a virus.

Leap requires user interaction in order to infect a machine, as the user receiving an instant message containing the worm will have to extract the executable from the archive and then run as admin. When run, it appears immediately that it is not a harmless jpeg file but in fact a malicious binary file. It runs in command/shell mode calling a terminal session for it to execute.

You have to type your username and password and run that yourself. A JPEG needing a username and password is quite obviously not a JPEG, and since it cannot run on it's own by any means, it is not a virus. It's a very bad program.

These were all the viruses for the far far less secure Mac OS Classic (1 - 9). They will not work on any current Mac, and aren't found in the wild anymore anyway.

Killyp said:
I could have sworn it was more than one
Click to expand...

It's actually less. It's zero.
 
The IT jerk at my works uses the existence of macvirus.org to prove the existence of viruses for OS X. It's enough for him to categorically state OS X suffer from viruses, trojans etc like Windows.:rolleyes:
 
bartelby said:
The IT jerk at my works uses the existence of macvirus.org to prove the existence of viruses for OS X. It's enough for him to categorically state OS X suffer from viruses, trojans etc like Windows.:rolleyes:
Click to expand...

Then explain to him how none of the OS X things are viruses, and none of the actual viruses listed there will run on OS X.
 
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