C|Net has a blog on their site “The ‘Macarena’ is now a low-risk Mac OS X virus“. Despite, the title, this is actually a pretty scary thought for Mac users.
This comment by rapier1 sums it up nicely. Get the link here.
People often say “well its just a proof off concept so it doesn’t matter”. What peopel aren’t understanding is that proof of concept code is often used to build *real* and *destructive* viruses. It does not take a whole lot of effort to piggyback a destructive payload on top of an efficient transmission system.
Mac users (and I am one myself) tend to feel that they don’t have to worry about viruses and malware. As such they tend to leave their systems wide open. They pay little attention to basic security protocols because they feel that OS X has already solved all of those problems. Unfortunately that isn’t the case. When someone does cobblet together a destructive virus it will sweep through the mac user population because of this complacent attitutde. Personally, I think it wil be a useful, if painful, wake up call to the community making it clear to us that we aren’t immune.
Amen, brother. (emphasis above is mine)
Mac users, compounded by the annoying commercials out now, have always had this “we don’t get viruses” kinda attitude. Macs growing popularity, and (I’m sure) the commercials, have made them a tempting target. Nobody really bothered to goto much effort to build viruses and malware for Macs since really… whats the point? Not many machines would be infected since they are such a small percent of total computers out there. But now that they are gaining in popularity, maybe now they have garnered a bit of unwanted attention.
And as rapier1 points out above, all of those computers are wide-open for anybody scheme against. A sucessful virus could rampage across almost the entire Mac populace before anyone knows whats going on.
Time to buy stock in Symantec, Macafee, and anybody else out there who makes Mac versions of the AV software…