Virus

S

stain designs

Guest
At the office, we have some designers (mac users) like my happy little self. We all use ichat as one of our main sources of communication with clients, friends, and other artists. There are also a ton of poor little PC users here. A virus has came into our network poisoning all those who were asking to be poisoned by even using a PC in the first place. The virus came as a link through AIM. Those who clicked on it, got infected. Then it continued to just pop up on computers in our network that did not even have a chat program installed. So yes, my mac, along with all other mac users is still chillin, relaxing, spitting out some itunes and some fine design, but all the PC users are sitting at their desk all confused looking, lol. hahahaha.

Anyway, here is the question:
Can mac user's "host" a virus that won't infect the MAC, but spread it to others, or just continue to infect our network?

Does this make any sense?
 
OP
K

Kokopelli

Guest
Depending on the type of virus, absolutely. A worm is unlikely. But a doc or other file based virus sure. That is the main reason I scan my PB periodically.


EDIT: The type of virus you are describing above though is not likely to get spread by the Mac. Just to clarify.
 
OP
S

stain designs

Guest
Kokopelli said:
Depending on the type of virus, absolutely. A worm is unlikely. But a doc or other file based virus sure. That is the main reason I scan my PB periodically.


EDIT: The type of virus you are describing above though is not likely to get spread by the Mac. Just to clarify.


OK. Good, just double checking.
I just wanted to know if we can spread a virus without knowing or sending any files. Lets say I just use ichat, don't send any files to anyone here, just talk to people outside our network, can I still infect the PC's on this network without knowing?
 
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Ah, isn't this the only reported virus for macs (i could be wrong), it effects certain mac software and stops it from working.
 
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There was recently a virus that spread via iChat and infected Macs, but it was deamed fairly harmless and doesn't infect PCs, so this probably isn't "Leap A".
 
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stain designs

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Ya. for a mac to get that (ichat virus thing), you accept an unknown file, download it and try to install it. As far as I know, thats it.
 
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I believe it actually circulated as an image of OS 10.5 "Leopard", and it spiked Mac user's curiosity and they downloaded the image. The "image" was actually a few lines of Terminal code and a trojan horse that had the suffix .jpg.

MacWorld tested it's macliciousness and deamed it fairly harmless. It's supposed to disable Cocoa apps, but even when MW allowed the thing to run it didn't do what it was supposed to...
 

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