Last week brought news of the world's first Mac OS X virus. And wouldn't you know that it's Apple's own instant messaging program, iChat, that's used for distribution. The threat from this virus is rated low, appropriately, because it does require users to click on a malicious link. Nonetheless, it does highlight that Apple's OS is not immune to viruses, and that instant messaging is one of today's hotbeds for viruses and malware.
Read the complete story at ComputerWorld online.
Don't get me wrong: Mac OS X is a great OS and I don't think that this social engineering-based exploit signifies any inherent weakness in Mac OS X. It does perhaps signal the end of the carefree days for OS X users, though, who will now have to scrutinize things on their computer like the rest of the world.
Rather than welcome Mac users to the no longer Windows-only club of IM viruses and malware, I instead extend an invitation to the club of BitWise. :) (Sorry, I couldn't resist!)
I send you a link on BitWise to "http://www.mysite.com/virus.exe"
You click it and run it, you're infected, my "virus" now sends the link to everyone on your contact list. Some click, some don't. Thats pretty much all a virus could be, not even BitWise is safe from that.
Two important things here:
1) The virus has to be written for your OS. I can send virus.exe to every Mac and Linux user in the world and not one of them will be infected.
2) On BitWise, a potential spammer or malcontent has to provide a valid email address to sign up (which they probably won't want to do). Then, when this person connects to you, they have to reveal their IP address. Even if they don't connect to you, the attempts are still noted in the event log and their IP address is shown. This would reveal their location at that time, making the chance of them being tracked much higher. There's also no way to send a message without being logged in.
So, is it possible on BitWise? Yes. Is it much, much less likely? Yes.
As I noted in my original post, the most interesting part is that the virus Mac OS X virus is distributed over IM. Who'd have thought that 5 years ago?
Today I had the keys on my computer not working correctly. Some keys just didn't type anything. Other keys typed things different that what should be coming out. i.e the y key or something displayed a number when you typed it. This seemed like a virus. I could restart the computer and it would disappear for a while then come back. I found a strange program on my desk top it the title of all 88888 I put it in the trash. the problem seems to have disappeared again.
Has any one had a similar problem? is this a worm or virus making the rounds? What do I do to prevent or fix it?
Martin if you have a laptop you probably just have num lock on