Computer 'Worms' Turn on Macs

Carl Bialik from WSJ writes "Macs have been laregly immune to the viruses, worms and malware that have plagued PCs, but the Mac's recent popularity uptick has meant that 'bad guys appear to be casing the joint,' the Wall Street Journal reports. Among the signs: two recently discovered worms and the discovery of a vulnerability in Mac OS X that leaves Safari open to a hack. A Symantec engineer predicts a 'gradual erosion' of the idea that Macs are a safer operating system than Windows. 'Some security experts believe hackers are becoming more interested in writing nasty code for Macs precisely because of reports of its relative immunity to security woes,' the WSJ reports. 'Apple itself has gone out of its way not to promote the Mac's relative safety, lest it tempt hackers to prove the company wrong. Apple declined to discuss the topic of security in depth for this article.'"

Childishness

[LiquidCoooled]

Folks don't need to worry.

Using google images as a definitive source, I tried the following searches

Microsoft worm

and

apple worm

Surprisingly the Microsoft one was filled with warning messages and exclamation marks and maggots.

Meanwhile the apple one was all cutesy and cartoony and fluffy (some of the worms even appear to be wearing turtle necks)

The world will continue to turn.

Mac OS X in the malware picture?

[sprins]

...bad guys appear to be casing the joint...

Dang! Well, back to OS/2 for that good ol' "security by obscurity" strategy.

Re:They could report a worm a day ...

[TubeSteak]

The could report a worm or virus a day for the rest of my LIFE and they'd still have a better security record than Windows.

I guess the real question is: "How many of those bugs will remain unfixed by the time you die."

We already know Microsoft's answer, but how does Apple deal with bugs in Mac OS 8 and Mac OS 9? (And does anyone still use Mac OS 7?)

Re:not a worm or a virus!

[Dausha]

"It is a Trojan and those have existed since the first rm -rf / script."

I don't get it. I tried running the "rm -rf /" script, and got nothing. I tried it again as root. It just sat there and worked patiently for a few minutes before returning a prompt. Was it supposed to do something cool? If so, maybe I should have run it on a desktop instead of the production server? Any hints at what I did wrong?

Maybe I should try it on my Windows machine next? Shouldn't I type "C:\" instead? Or, is this script not that portable?

Macs will never catch up

[HermanAB]

Windows is so far ahead in the malware world, there is no way that any other system will ever catch up to the hundreds of thousands of viruses, worms and trojans that is essential to the full Windows experience.

Works both ways...

[Shanep]

Symantec speaking baddly of Macs should work for them both ways. Prevent people from switching away from the arch they sell most product for AND frighten Mac users into buying their crap.

They will only be able to demonize Mac's for so long, until people realise that they are harder to exploit on a large scale because they come with less insane defaults.

BTW, if you really REALLY want to fuck up your Mac install... install some Symantec products. A serious downgrade.