Mac users beware!

[TheAnimus]

http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=29753

AV FIRM Sophos said it has encountered a virus for the Apple Mac OS X operating system called Leap-A, or Oompa-A.
The firm said it spreads using the iChat instant messenger, forwarding itself as a file called latestpics.tgz.

When that's opened, it masquerades as JPG graphics icon, using the text oompa as an infection marker in resource forks of infected programs.

Graham Cluley, senior consultant at Sophos, said: "Some owners of Macs held the belief that Mac OS X is incapable of harbouring computer viruses, but Leap A will leave them shellshocked." µ

This is the problem when the only extra security a platform provides is one by obscurity, users tend to get the rather iritating belive that their incredibly safe, when really, its just no one cba to target them.

Take OpenBSD, they rant on about how great W^X is, but its possible to get round it still, yet they try to present it as if its unbreakable. This is how security happens via arogance.

Same goes with how little coverage the undocumented exploit in OSX that someone demonstrated at a recent security conference, thats rather concerning don't you think?

[shaithis]

Now that people don't need a Mac to run OSX, I suspect the amount of OSX viri to explode.

Its inevitable.

[TheAnimus]

not really, because the user base isn't going to expand greatly as a result.

What might be intresting to see is how many people convert to writing mac viruses because the targets are weeker, and now their just running on x86 instruction set, this makes it easyer to make buffer overflow exploits and the like, because far more people know x86 far better than ppc.

[aidanjt]

Great, now Apple only need 8,000,000 or so more viruses to catch up with Microsoft