estigma, on Apr 9 2006, 11:25 PM, said:
Rui,
OSX.Leap.A - WORM
Affected operating systems: Macintosh
Side effects: Deletes files off the computer, Leaves non-infected files on computer.
Protection available since: 16 February 2006
Um WORM não é um vírus, estigma. Pelo menos, não exactamente como os vírus que conhecemos.
Já agora:
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I don't really understand how many media reporters have taken up the stance that a virus is finally on the Mac. First it is not a virus, and if you really want to log on to an administrator account on your machine, and do some damage, than you don't need malware! Seriously, the reason that mac fanboys say that macs don't have to worry about viruses, is well, because they don't. There has never been one, so why wouldn't a mac fan say they are not worried. I have never all of the sudden just left the surface of the earth and started flying like a bird, and as a result, I am not too worried about this happening. I would look pretty stupid trying to tie myself to park benches, while proclaiming "it only a matter of time until gravity will give up, then I will shoot into the air!!" A lot of people have also stated that the reason for there not being any mac viruses is because they have such a small market share. Well, there were several viruses for OS 9, and OS X is much more popular than OS 9. So the system became more popular and well known, and the hackers decided to stop writing viruses?? This is not logical! If the number of viruses was indeed related to popularity, then the number should have increased proportionally, not drop to zero!
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I knew that as soon as as something like this happened Windows centric sites (Cnet) would be trying to tell everyone there is no difference between OSX & Windows XP. Nothing is perfect, that's a given but to leap to that comparison immediately was totally over the top & misleading. Seems like these "tech writers" were trying to tell me that a grain of sand is the same thing as a desert. Nonsense.
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Leap.A, the more 'virulent' of the two 'worms', actually sounds more like a Trojan, and requires a user to perform a series of steps before the payload (in this case, next to nothing) is delivered.
Firstly, the malware must be accepted via iChat, then the user must double-click on the file to decompress it, then double-click the 'jpeg' to view it. If all this is done, the user is then asked to provide his/her administrator account and password for the image to be opened.
If the admin password is provided then the Leap.A code then attempts to install itself into an application.
It's at the point that an admin password is requested that alarm bells should be ringing for the majority of users - any responsible user should be asking him or herself what was going on. (In OS X, images open by default in an application called Preview and don't require admin privileges to open.)
The majority of OS X users are not logged in as 'true' administrators by default and fewer still run as the root or 'super' user in the operating system's underlying Unix core. To do so requires a significant amount of command line work - beyond the ken of most users.
Apple this week issued a security update for OS X which addresses some of the concerns raised by the recent threats (available via Software Update or the Apple website).
In reality, all this represents very low risk for most Mac users.
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The Mac platform has been famously untroubled by malware for years.
Some attribute this to the theory that malware writers are interested solely in the mass propagation of their work and the small market share of the Mac (anything between three and five per cent depending on whose statistics you believe) is of very marginal interest.
In addition, since the arrival of OS X many have pointed to the underlying robustness of the Mac's Unix core, with its root access disabled by default, as a formidable obstacle to malware authors.
The indications are that if the Mac continues its recent increase of market share its attraction as a target to malware authors will increase. However, the indisputable fact that Mac OS X's Unix core is fundamentally more secure than Windows means that the challenge is considerably greater for potential malware 'switchers'.
In a Minority Report column on OS X security published in June 2005, Sophos product manager Phil Wood commented: "The technical challenges of producing malware for the OS X operating system are more difficult than for Windows. Both Mac OS X and Linux are much more secure than Windows. You would have to be genuinely clever to write an OS X virus and most virus writers are not."
Rui Batista
A verdade doi 
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