The uber geeks

Macintoshes and their apparent viruses

I can agree that the Macintosh platform, as it becomes more popular, will be targeted more for viruses than it has been since its 2001 release (speaking specifically of Mac OS X). This is a no-brainer.

However, the way that many in the media title their articles, may lead many to believe that the Macintosh is not only susceptible (which I am sure it is), but that it is plagued by viruses.

The most recent example is an article that I saw first on Newsvine, which later popped its head up on CNN, entitled: “Macs are virus targets, some experts warn“. First off all, saying “experts” really pisses me off, especially when they do not point to any specific experts saying it (except for the guy that the story is about). Here is a quote that really caught my eye:

He and at least one other person who clicked on the links were infected by what security experts call the first-ever virus for Mac OS X, the operating system that has shipped with every Mac sold since 2001 and has survived virtually unscathed from the onslaught of malware unleashed on the Internet in recent years.

So, by my count (not using a calculator here) there were two people that clicked on a link and were infected by “what security experts call the first-ever virus for the Mac OS X”. Do these people read their articles before they publish them? Let’s examine this sentence a bit. How many times can the “first-ever” virus be released? Ten, twelve? Ludicrous how often people use this. Secondly, they clicked a link to become infected with a virus. This would not make it a virus, per se.

Here is what wikipedia has to say about what a virus is:

In computer security technology, a virus is a self-replicating/self-reproducing-automation program that spreads by inserting copies of itself into other executable code or documents. A computer virus behaves in a way similar to a biological virus, which spreads by inserting itself into living cells. Extending the analogy, the insertion of a virus into the program is termed as an “infection”, and the infected file (or executable code that is not part of a file) is called a “host”. Viruses are one of the several types of malicious software or malware. In a common parlance, the term virus is often extended to refer to worms, trojan horses and other sorts of malware; however, this can confuse computer users, since viruses in the narrow sense of the word are less common than they used to be, compared to other forms of malware. This confusion can have serious consequences, because it may lead to a focus on preventing one genre of malware over another, potentially leaving computers vulnerable to future damage. However, a basic rule is that computer viruses cannot directly damage hardware, but only software.

Sorry for such a large quote, but I think the entire description is very warranted in this instance. A virus is self-replicated, it spreads itself, often involuntarily. Clicking on a link, will not give you a virus on a Macintosh. (at least not in our current state of affairs) Perhaps you can download a virus, and then later execute it. But I hardly call that involuntary. And, it probably won’t spread itself to everyone in your address book. A piece of malicious executable code is not a virus unless it automatically spreads itself, and can run itself on the client machine without the user knowing. There are a lot of grey areas in that sentence, but you get my point. If you download, and execute, a piece of malicious code that is not a virus. It might be a trojan, or just a “malicious executable”, but not a virus.

Maybe what this “expert” was talking about was that he and buddy clicked on a link that crashed Safari. We’ve seen this reported on many occasions and each build of Safari released fixes some of those issues. I don’t know. But I seriously doubt that this was a virus, and that the actual program or malicious code that they got could be classified as a virus at all.

I was speaking with John Gruber about this very subject, and I hope he writes about this in the very near future, but he made an interesting point. If there was a Macintosh virus, what would be bigger news. That there was 1 virus on the Macintosh, or that there are 10,000 new viruses released for Windows each week, most of which are never dealt with except by third-parties. Unfortunately the former is more important to some people than the latter. However, I believe we’ve yet to see “the first-ever Macintosh virus” that does any amount of real damage. I’m sure it will happen, in fact I full expect it to, but people are starting to try to find the virus before it even happens. Not sure of the motivation but it really gets my goat.

I am not alone in my thinking.

BOOOM: Gruber’s thoughts

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