February 23, 2009 • 17 mins
Apple computers used to have 'security through obscurity' because most hackers didn't bother writing computer viruses for a Mac. Now that appears to be changing -- learn why in this podcast from HowStuffWorks.com.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve Camray.
It's ready. Are you get in touch with technology with
tex Stuff from how stuff works dot com. Hello, everybody,
welcome to tech stuff. My name is Chris Polette. I'm
an editor here at how stuff works dot com, and today,
sitting next to me, as usual, is senior writer Jonathan Strickland.
(00:23):
Hey there, um, Today we're gonna talk about again the
shady side of computing. Yes, it seems we talked about
this a lot. It turns out that, well, it's more
in a pretty big shady side. Well, you know, Okay,
Well let's look at it this way. We can talk
about the all the easy stuff and then we go, hey,
everything's working normally. Well, that's got it for today. Yeah,
(00:44):
that's true. That's a pretty short So we're going to
talk We talked once before about computer viruses. Actually a
couple of times before we've talked about computer viruses, and
today we wanted to talk about a specific pair of
trojans that recently attacked a computing system that, for a
very long time was seen as practically unassailable. That's true.
(01:08):
We're talking about the Macintosh and Honestly, you might be
surprised to know this, but the very very first virus
was written by somebody named Rich Scranta, and he actually
created this as a practical joke when he was in
the ninth grade for his apple to computer lab at school.
And it was just a very simple thing that every
once in a while and put up a message on
(01:29):
the when the computer would boot up saying essentially, this
is a virus. I mean I could read the whole thing,
but um, just kind of a novelty thing. He did
it to test the theory that it could be done.
And now viruses are more than twenty five years old,
but they have gotten significantly more malicious. Right, Yeah, there,
there there are still viruses that are just jokes, you know.
(01:50):
There's still viruses that go around where all it is
is just something that messes with you and makes you
think you're going crazy because your computer is not acting right. Um,
but those are you know, those are annoying, But those
aren't the ones that make the news. The ones that
make the news are the ones, of course, that cause
billions and billions of dollars worth of damages when people
and corporations, when their systems just completely crash and no
(02:12):
one communicates with anyone else. That's true. And there are
a couple of things we need to point out before
you get in in deep. We need to point out
that you were mentioning that we were going to discuss
two trojans, and we should point out the difference in
a trojan and a virus. I think um the virus
is a self replicating program. Um it um basically will copy.
(02:33):
For example, it will copy information from your address book.
It will send itself to other people in your email
message saying hey, you need to open this file. It's urgent.
And when you do, you load it into your computer,
which then you know, propagates and continues to do. A
trojan doesn't replicate by itself. UM. It's something that maybe
somebody would say, do you have any viruses on your computer?
(02:54):
Download this and find out now, And you download it
and you install it, and lo and behold. It's not
a virus protection program. It is, in need, a trojan horse,
and it gets in and messages with your computer. Both
are kinds of malware which you know mouth being bad,
dangerous software. And of course it's called a trojan after
the trojan horse, which you know, we all have heard
of it. You know, lots of soldiers hidd inside the
(03:18):
trojan horse. It was pulled into Troy. They all popped
out and then they started causing a ruckus as soldiers
are want to do. Now, the trojans on your computer,
same sort of thing. Hopefully they're not on your computer,
but the trojans that could be on your computer, same
sort of thing. It's a packet that has inside it
something nasty, and it can be a virus. So a
trojan can deliver a virus which could then self replicate,
(03:40):
or it could be something else. And one of the
more prevalent trojan attacks, or at least one of the
ones that gets the most news, are the kind that's
set up butt nets, and these are programs the trojans.
These trojans carry programs that give a remote user access
to the core of your work computer. So suddenly someone
(04:02):
somewhere else, possibly on the other side of the world,
can make your computer do things. And if they're clever enough,
they can make them do things. Make your computer do things,
and you don't. You're not even aware that your computer
is acting abnormally. Well, if you were, then they could
do something about it, or at least stop it. Yeah,
at least turn your computer off if nothing else. But
(04:23):
but yeah, if IF they're clever. And the reason why
I say if is a lot of these programs tend
to be propagated by people who themselves are not great programmers.
They tend to grab script from other websites and use them,
and they're called script kiddies. Um, but let's get to
the specifics of the Mac trojans that we wanted to
(04:43):
talk about now. For a very long time, MAX have
been seen as sort of, uh, much more safe than PCs, right,
They're they're seen as you know, people are very proud.
They'll say, I don't have to worry about viruses. I
use a Mac. That's true. Um, this is a principle,
which is it has a at least a rhyming name.
(05:04):
Security through obscurity. Basically, why bother writing viruses for the
Mac crowd, because they're only ten or so of them
out there, right, so they don't even bother. And and
on top of that, the Mac operating system and on
hardware is a closed system. It's not like PCs where
you can you know, you can get a circuit board
from one place and you can get memory from another place.
(05:26):
Max are an all in one package that you get
from Apple, and you can upgrade and everything. But for
the most part, it's a closed system. So again, security
through obscurity. It's not something that is widely understood. Not
people don't don't sit there and do a lot of
Mac hacks. I mean there are people who do them,
but there are fewer than the PC hacks. That's true.
(05:47):
That's true. Um. And for a long time that that
people in the Mac crowd of sort of speaking as
someone who is a Mac user more often than not. Um,
you know, we're sort of under that mindset. We're saying, hey,
I don't really need to spend seventy five dollars on
a piece of antivirus software because my computer is safe. Um.
(06:09):
And Apple explains that, you know, they think that their
system is safe. They're not really particularly concerned about it,
except not too long ago. A few months ago, they
actually had a page up on their website and everybody
took notice of the fact that they were saying, well,
maybe you should install some antivirus software. Probably wouldn't be
a bad idea, and that which kind of deviates from there. Well,
(06:31):
the OS ten operating system is a very secure system.
You don't really need to worry about viruses. It's a
selling point, it's a marketing point for them to UH
to say how secure it is, right, And I think
this is sort of the price of popularity UM. Mac
sales UH increased significantly over two thousand and eight before
the economic downturn, which affected all computer sales. But they're
(06:53):
up to a of market share now, right, so, and
that's significant. So now that there are more Mac users
out there, there's more of an incentive for someone who
wants to create malware to create it for the Mac
because now they have a significant population they can affect. Now,
before if you were like, well, if people have PCs
and one person has a Mac, it makes more sense
(07:15):
for me to program something for the ninety people because
I'm gonna get more hits that way. But if the
population of computer users gets high enough, then it totally
makes sense. Okay, well I'm gonna switch gears because these
people not only are there more of them, but they
have been lulled into a false sense of security and
I can take advantage of that. That's true now. The
the Trojans that hit in January of two thousand nine
(07:38):
that affect max effect a very specific subset of Mac users,
and I like to call them the naughty ones. So,
in other words, right now, if using a Mac is
still very safe, I should I'm gonna go out and
say it right now, using a Mac. If you're using
a Mac and you're being a law abiding, um, you know,
(08:00):
upstanding citizen on the web, then you're going to be
pretty safe using a Mac. But if you're a filthy, dirty,
pirate yar and you're trying to steal software from the Mac,
you might be in for a nasty surprise. That's true.
Um and all started with a suite of software that
those of you who are not Mac users may not
(08:22):
be familiar with. It's called I Work. Um, it's a collection,
it's it's not really a A and Microsoft Office killer.
But there are three applications that are part of the suite.
Pages which is a you know, word processing program, Keynote,
which is a presentation program, and Numbers, which is a
spreadsheet program. And uh, oddly enough, these are very much
(08:44):
like three of the major applications in Office. But um,
there was a pirate ID version going around, a broken
version that people were starting to download, and uh, it
contained more than just a copy of I work, it
also contained a trojan horse and so this was propagated
along or spread along bit torrent. So people using bit
(09:06):
torrent to download a pirated copy of I work um
received a trojan that installed as part of the eye
work Services installation process. And um it gave someone no
one's really sure who at this point, as when we're
recording this root access to the victimized computer. And that's
(09:31):
that's a bad thing. That's what you can build a
bot net or a zombie computer army out of are
these computers that have a compromised root access system. It
means that someone else can then sort of fiddle with
your computer and make it do things like UM distributed
denial of service attacks or spreading spam, that kind of thing.
That's sort of what most zombie computer armies are are
(09:56):
used for. Yeah, the name of this one actually is
OS ten dot Trojan dot ice services dot A catchy Yeah. Yeah,
well they all are. They have these fancy names. And
it also depends on which, uh, which anti virus authority
you're talking to, because at least on the PC side,
usually each one has its own name for the each
(10:18):
virus that is even more confusing. But in this case, yes,
yep and uh, it's known to bury parts of itself
very deep in the system. UM. As a matter of fact,
the experts say that if you've got this on there
on your machine, it's probably best to do a clean
installation of your operating system and just format your hard
drive again again. Back up your computer, right. It's always important.
(10:41):
We say it over and over, and you think we're joking.
We're not joking. Not that I do it myself. I'm
guilty of not doing I have been known to go
a long time between backups, and it has in the past.
I've I've become legendary in the office for having some
hissy fits when I've had problems with my computer. Yep, yep,
(11:02):
manly hissy fits. I should add, if you say so, okay, um,
And then you know that this happened, uh, I guess
technically it was late two thousand eight when it started
to show up, but you know, it was the holiday,
so we waited to be worried about it until the
new year, and the whole the whole eye work O
nine didn't even really come out until UM Macworld that's true,
but which was immediately after writing year, so yeah, exactly. Um,
(11:25):
but there was a variant that showed up not too
long afterward. I just call it B. Just call it B. Yeah.
Well it's the blah blah blah blah blah blah blah
B instead of A. Okay, I mean, I don't have
it written down in front. Un Lets you get away
with that as you're you're right. So this is a
second trojan, very similar to the first one. Um, but
this one was attached to pirated versions of Adobe Photoshop
(11:48):
c S four for Apple, So again an illegal uh
application and pirated application. It's is the one that's carrying
this trojan. And if you went out and you bought
a copy of Adobe Photoshop c S four, you're fine.
I mean, that's that's a legitimate copy. It's not carrying
anything dangerous. It's only for the people who are saying, hey,
(12:09):
I want this, but I don't want to shell out
the you know, several hundred dollars it's gonna cost me
to buy this program, so I'm just gonna steal it. Well,
they're the ones who are paying the price right now,
because they're the ones who had their computers infected. So, uh,
if you were a a Mac user, the first and
most important thing you should know about all this is
you're not completely immune from viruses. There's there, you know,
(12:30):
no operating system. Even an Apple spokesperson said this, no
operating system is a hundred percent safe. There there's always
some vulnerability. And you know, of course, the manufacturers, the
software manufacturers. Microsoft is famous for patching on regular intervals
UM and Apple does sends out intervals patches to UM.
(12:51):
The thing is, you know, you need to be aware
that it can happen. And investing in any virus software
isn't really a bad idea. Yeah, it's expensive and there's
not a lot of free anty virus software. UM I
would be wary, especially of downloading anything that has a
pop up window. Yeah that's a bad sign. Yeah, but
(13:12):
you know, of course, Norton samantechmates makes a Norton anty
virus for Macintosh, and uh Antigo, which also does is
the the organization that finds a lot of the Mac
viruses and issues alerts. UM offers its virus barrier, and
both of them offer a dual platform version of the software.
Because some people who are using Intel based Macintosh is
are running both Windows and Macintosh operating systems on their machines. Yeah,
(13:35):
it's called using creating a virtual machine yep, yep, or
in dual boot boots. Um, but yeah we should. Antigo
actually said that in January that at least twenty thousand
people had downloaded that I Work O nine installer. So
that's twenty people who had their computers infected by a trojan.
(13:58):
And that's just the I Work and that's not including
the Photoshop one. I don't have any any figures on that.
I didn't I didn't see any fresh numbers on that.
That was actually fairly close to when we uh, when
we are recording the podcast now, so new hard numbers there,
um it is. There's also a possibility to that you
can run a foul of some malicious websites and some
(14:19):
of the runtime operating systems. You know, there are a
cross platform you know, if there is a virus that
operates on them, you can you could possibly have some
problems with that too. So always good to be very
conscious of what you do, no matter what operating system
you're on. Now, sad to say, if your computer has
been compromised, Let's say that you are a fine upstanding person,
(14:41):
but your little brother decided he wanted a copy of
I work for some reason. Perhaps he's starting a new
lemonade stand and he needs to have a spreadsheet tracking
all his sales, or a nice presentation. But of course
you know you didn't download it. Of course we would
never suggest such a thing. But let's say that your
computer gets a acted by it. You can find a
(15:02):
trojan removal tool supplied by Secure Mac if you if
you need that service, if if you know that your
computer has been compromised, UM, I recommend that you get
this trojan removal tool so that you can take take
care of that problem, because the longer you leave it,
the more likely your computer will be used in some
really nasty denial of service tech or spam at tech
(15:24):
or whatever. I mean. For all we know, the person
who is who designed this trojan did so just to
prove a point. We don't know that there was any
malicious intent, but we don't know that there's not either.
That's that's true. It's almost like that the virus I
mentioned earlier, the elk cloner, which was the very very
first thing. It was sort of a proof of concept
thing and and in in this case a practical joke
(15:47):
than an actual problem. But you know, you'll notice if
your computer is starting to run more slowly. UM, if
you're having trouble you know, with the general operations of
stuff just doesn't work the way it did. UM, you
might have reason to, uh, to believe that there is
a evil entity lurking within your hard drive. Right if
you look and see that there's a there are a
(16:09):
lot of packets going across your home network and yet
nothing is downloading at the moment, that's a good indication
something's going on. You know. My favorite, uh, my favorite
macvirus of all time has to be the the Honor
System virus UM, the one that basically went around saying, well,
you know, we're not going to write a virus for
your Macintosh. Please delete your entire hard driving. Forward this
(16:29):
to all your friends. Yeah, so this is a good
We we've pretty much kind of drawn the line between
hackers who might show you that it's possible to create
a virus in in order to boost security. UM. Hackers
often will do that. They'll they'll find security flaws and
they'll publicize them in the hopes that someone will address
(16:50):
those flaws. And fix it, whereas crackers are the kind
of hackers who will exploit it for their own you know,
means that's true. And they're all so tasty with soup
they are. That's a good that's a good stopping point.
So we're gonna wrap things up before we go. I
thought it would be nice if we gave a shout
(17:10):
out to a sister podcast of ours. It's brand new.
It just started publishing um February really and it's called
stuff Mom Never told you. And it's a sort of
a you know, a feminine perspective on various articles that
appear on our site. And I highly recommend it um
in a masculine way. Excellent. Yea, all right, And if
(17:34):
you want to learn more about computer viruses and computer
topics in general, you can check out dozens of articles
that we have live right now at how stuff works
dot com. And we'll talk to you again really soon
for more on this and thousands of other topics. Is
it how stuff works dot com, brought to you by
(17:55):
the reinvented two thousand twelve camera. It's ready, are you
Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve Camray.
It's ready. Are you get in touch with technology with
tex Stuff from how stuff works dot com. Hello, everybody,
welcome to tech stuff. My name is Chris Polette. I'm
an editor here at how stuff works dot com, and today,
sitting next to me, as usual, is senior writer Jonathan Strickland.
(00:23):
Hey there, um, Today we're gonna talk about again the
shady side of computing. Yes, it seems we talked about
this a lot. It turns out that, well, it's more
in a pretty big shady side. Well, you know, Okay,
Well let's look at it this way. We can talk
about the all the easy stuff and then we go, hey,
everything's working normally. Well, that's got it for today. Yeah,
(00:44):
that's true. That's a pretty short So we're going to
talk We talked once before about computer viruses. Actually a
couple of times before we've talked about computer viruses, and
today we wanted to talk about a specific pair of
trojans that recently attacked a computing system that, for a
very long time was seen as practically unassailable. That's true.
(01:08):
We're talking about the Macintosh and Honestly, you might be
surprised to know this, but the very very first virus
was written by somebody named Rich Scranta, and he actually
created this as a practical joke when he was in
the ninth grade for his apple to computer lab at school.
And it was just a very simple thing that every
once in a while and put up a message on
(01:29):
the when the computer would boot up saying essentially, this
is a virus. I mean I could read the whole thing,
but um, just kind of a novelty thing. He did
it to test the theory that it could be done.
And now viruses are more than twenty five years old,
but they have gotten significantly more malicious. Right, Yeah, there,
there there are still viruses that are just jokes, you know.
(01:50):
There's still viruses that go around where all it is
is just something that messes with you and makes you
think you're going crazy because your computer is not acting right. Um,
but those are you know, those are annoying, But those
aren't the ones that make the news. The ones that
make the news are the ones, of course, that cause
billions and billions of dollars worth of damages when people
and corporations, when their systems just completely crash and no
(02:12):
one communicates with anyone else. That's true. And there are
a couple of things we need to point out before
you get in in deep. We need to point out
that you were mentioning that we were going to discuss
two trojans, and we should point out the difference in
a trojan and a virus. I think um the virus
is a self replicating program. Um it um basically will copy.
(02:33):
For example, it will copy information from your address book.
It will send itself to other people in your email
message saying hey, you need to open this file. It's urgent.
And when you do, you load it into your computer,
which then you know, propagates and continues to do. A
trojan doesn't replicate by itself. UM. It's something that maybe
somebody would say, do you have any viruses on your computer?
(02:54):
Download this and find out now, And you download it
and you install it, and lo and behold. It's not
a virus protection program. It is, in need, a trojan horse,
and it gets in and messages with your computer. Both
are kinds of malware which you know mouth being bad,
dangerous software. And of course it's called a trojan after
the trojan horse, which you know, we all have heard
of it. You know, lots of soldiers hidd inside the
(03:18):
trojan horse. It was pulled into Troy. They all popped
out and then they started causing a ruckus as soldiers
are want to do. Now, the trojans on your computer,
same sort of thing. Hopefully they're not on your computer,
but the trojans that could be on your computer, same
sort of thing. It's a packet that has inside it
something nasty, and it can be a virus. So a
trojan can deliver a virus which could then self replicate,
(03:40):
or it could be something else. And one of the
more prevalent trojan attacks, or at least one of the
ones that gets the most news, are the kind that's
set up butt nets, and these are programs the trojans.
These trojans carry programs that give a remote user access
to the core of your work computer. So suddenly someone
(04:02):
somewhere else, possibly on the other side of the world,
can make your computer do things. And if they're clever enough,
they can make them do things. Make your computer do things,
and you don't. You're not even aware that your computer
is acting abnormally. Well, if you were, then they could
do something about it, or at least stop it. Yeah,
at least turn your computer off if nothing else. But
(04:23):
but yeah, if IF they're clever. And the reason why
I say if is a lot of these programs tend
to be propagated by people who themselves are not great programmers.
They tend to grab script from other websites and use them,
and they're called script kiddies. Um, but let's get to
the specifics of the Mac trojans that we wanted to
(04:43):
talk about now. For a very long time, MAX have
been seen as sort of, uh, much more safe than PCs, right,
They're they're seen as you know, people are very proud.
They'll say, I don't have to worry about viruses. I
use a Mac. That's true. Um, this is a principle,
which is it has a at least a rhyming name.
(05:04):
Security through obscurity. Basically, why bother writing viruses for the
Mac crowd, because they're only ten or so of them
out there, right, so they don't even bother. And and
on top of that, the Mac operating system and on
hardware is a closed system. It's not like PCs where
you can you know, you can get a circuit board
from one place and you can get memory from another place.
(05:26):
Max are an all in one package that you get
from Apple, and you can upgrade and everything. But for
the most part, it's a closed system. So again, security
through obscurity. It's not something that is widely understood. Not
people don't don't sit there and do a lot of
Mac hacks. I mean there are people who do them,
but there are fewer than the PC hacks. That's true.
(05:47):
That's true. Um. And for a long time that that
people in the Mac crowd of sort of speaking as
someone who is a Mac user more often than not. Um,
you know, we're sort of under that mindset. We're saying, hey,
I don't really need to spend seventy five dollars on
a piece of antivirus software because my computer is safe. Um.
(06:09):
And Apple explains that, you know, they think that their
system is safe. They're not really particularly concerned about it,
except not too long ago. A few months ago, they
actually had a page up on their website and everybody
took notice of the fact that they were saying, well,
maybe you should install some antivirus software. Probably wouldn't be
a bad idea, and that which kind of deviates from there. Well,
(06:31):
the OS ten operating system is a very secure system.
You don't really need to worry about viruses. It's a
selling point, it's a marketing point for them to UH
to say how secure it is, right, And I think
this is sort of the price of popularity UM. Mac
sales UH increased significantly over two thousand and eight before
the economic downturn, which affected all computer sales. But they're
(06:53):
up to a of market share now, right, so, and
that's significant. So now that there are more Mac users
out there, there's more of an incentive for someone who
wants to create malware to create it for the Mac
because now they have a significant population they can affect. Now,
before if you were like, well, if people have PCs
and one person has a Mac, it makes more sense
(07:15):
for me to program something for the ninety people because
I'm gonna get more hits that way. But if the
population of computer users gets high enough, then it totally
makes sense. Okay, well I'm gonna switch gears because these
people not only are there more of them, but they
have been lulled into a false sense of security and
I can take advantage of that. That's true now. The
the Trojans that hit in January of two thousand nine
(07:38):
that affect max effect a very specific subset of Mac users,
and I like to call them the naughty ones. So,
in other words, right now, if using a Mac is
still very safe, I should I'm gonna go out and
say it right now, using a Mac. If you're using
a Mac and you're being a law abiding, um, you know,
(08:00):
upstanding citizen on the web, then you're going to be
pretty safe using a Mac. But if you're a filthy, dirty,
pirate yar and you're trying to steal software from the Mac,
you might be in for a nasty surprise. That's true.
Um and all started with a suite of software that
those of you who are not Mac users may not
(08:22):
be familiar with. It's called I Work. Um, it's a collection,
it's it's not really a A and Microsoft Office killer.
But there are three applications that are part of the suite.
Pages which is a you know, word processing program, Keynote,
which is a presentation program, and Numbers, which is a
spreadsheet program. And uh, oddly enough, these are very much
(08:44):
like three of the major applications in Office. But um,
there was a pirate ID version going around, a broken
version that people were starting to download, and uh, it
contained more than just a copy of I work, it
also contained a trojan horse and so this was propagated
along or spread along bit torrent. So people using bit
(09:06):
torrent to download a pirated copy of I work um
received a trojan that installed as part of the eye
work Services installation process. And um it gave someone no
one's really sure who at this point, as when we're
recording this root access to the victimized computer. And that's
(09:31):
that's a bad thing. That's what you can build a
bot net or a zombie computer army out of are
these computers that have a compromised root access system. It
means that someone else can then sort of fiddle with
your computer and make it do things like UM distributed
denial of service attacks or spreading spam, that kind of thing.
That's sort of what most zombie computer armies are are
(09:56):
used for. Yeah, the name of this one actually is
OS ten dot Trojan dot ice services dot A catchy Yeah. Yeah,
well they all are. They have these fancy names. And
it also depends on which, uh, which anti virus authority
you're talking to, because at least on the PC side,
usually each one has its own name for the each
(10:18):
virus that is even more confusing. But in this case, yes,
yep and uh, it's known to bury parts of itself
very deep in the system. UM. As a matter of fact,
the experts say that if you've got this on there
on your machine, it's probably best to do a clean
installation of your operating system and just format your hard
drive again again. Back up your computer, right. It's always important.
(10:41):
We say it over and over, and you think we're joking.
We're not joking. Not that I do it myself. I'm
guilty of not doing I have been known to go
a long time between backups, and it has in the past.
I've I've become legendary in the office for having some
hissy fits when I've had problems with my computer. Yep, yep,
(11:02):
manly hissy fits. I should add, if you say so, okay, um,
And then you know that this happened, uh, I guess
technically it was late two thousand eight when it started
to show up, but you know, it was the holiday,
so we waited to be worried about it until the
new year, and the whole the whole eye work O
nine didn't even really come out until UM Macworld that's true,
but which was immediately after writing year, so yeah, exactly. Um,
(11:25):
but there was a variant that showed up not too
long afterward. I just call it B. Just call it B. Yeah.
Well it's the blah blah blah blah blah blah blah
B instead of A. Okay, I mean, I don't have
it written down in front. Un Lets you get away
with that as you're you're right. So this is a
second trojan, very similar to the first one. Um, but
this one was attached to pirated versions of Adobe Photoshop
(11:48):
c S four for Apple, So again an illegal uh
application and pirated application. It's is the one that's carrying
this trojan. And if you went out and you bought
a copy of Adobe Photoshop c S four, you're fine.
I mean, that's that's a legitimate copy. It's not carrying
anything dangerous. It's only for the people who are saying, hey,
(12:09):
I want this, but I don't want to shell out
the you know, several hundred dollars it's gonna cost me
to buy this program, so I'm just gonna steal it. Well,
they're the ones who are paying the price right now,
because they're the ones who had their computers infected. So, uh,
if you were a a Mac user, the first and
most important thing you should know about all this is
you're not completely immune from viruses. There's there, you know,
(12:30):
no operating system. Even an Apple spokesperson said this, no
operating system is a hundred percent safe. There there's always
some vulnerability. And you know, of course, the manufacturers, the
software manufacturers. Microsoft is famous for patching on regular intervals
UM and Apple does sends out intervals patches to UM.
(12:51):
The thing is, you know, you need to be aware
that it can happen. And investing in any virus software
isn't really a bad idea. Yeah, it's expensive and there's
not a lot of free anty virus software. UM I
would be wary, especially of downloading anything that has a
pop up window. Yeah that's a bad sign. Yeah, but
(13:12):
you know, of course, Norton samantechmates makes a Norton anty
virus for Macintosh, and uh Antigo, which also does is
the the organization that finds a lot of the Mac
viruses and issues alerts. UM offers its virus barrier, and
both of them offer a dual platform version of the software.
Because some people who are using Intel based Macintosh is
are running both Windows and Macintosh operating systems on their machines. Yeah,
(13:35):
it's called using creating a virtual machine yep, yep, or
in dual boot boots. Um, but yeah we should. Antigo
actually said that in January that at least twenty thousand
people had downloaded that I Work O nine installer. So
that's twenty people who had their computers infected by a trojan.
(13:58):
And that's just the I Work and that's not including
the Photoshop one. I don't have any any figures on that.
I didn't I didn't see any fresh numbers on that.
That was actually fairly close to when we uh, when
we are recording the podcast now, so new hard numbers there,
um it is. There's also a possibility to that you
can run a foul of some malicious websites and some
(14:19):
of the runtime operating systems. You know, there are a
cross platform you know, if there is a virus that
operates on them, you can you could possibly have some
problems with that too. So always good to be very
conscious of what you do, no matter what operating system
you're on. Now, sad to say, if your computer has
been compromised, Let's say that you are a fine upstanding person,
(14:41):
but your little brother decided he wanted a copy of
I work for some reason. Perhaps he's starting a new
lemonade stand and he needs to have a spreadsheet tracking
all his sales, or a nice presentation. But of course
you know you didn't download it. Of course we would
never suggest such a thing. But let's say that your
computer gets a acted by it. You can find a
(15:02):
trojan removal tool supplied by Secure Mac if you if
you need that service, if if you know that your
computer has been compromised, UM, I recommend that you get
this trojan removal tool so that you can take take
care of that problem, because the longer you leave it,
the more likely your computer will be used in some
really nasty denial of service tech or spam at tech
(15:24):
or whatever. I mean. For all we know, the person
who is who designed this trojan did so just to
prove a point. We don't know that there was any
malicious intent, but we don't know that there's not either.
That's that's true. It's almost like that the virus I
mentioned earlier, the elk cloner, which was the very very
first thing. It was sort of a proof of concept
thing and and in in this case a practical joke
(15:47):
than an actual problem. But you know, you'll notice if
your computer is starting to run more slowly. UM, if
you're having trouble you know, with the general operations of
stuff just doesn't work the way it did. UM, you
might have reason to, uh, to believe that there is
a evil entity lurking within your hard drive. Right if
you look and see that there's a there are a
(16:09):
lot of packets going across your home network and yet
nothing is downloading at the moment, that's a good indication
something's going on. You know. My favorite, uh, my favorite
macvirus of all time has to be the the Honor
System virus UM, the one that basically went around saying, well,
you know, we're not going to write a virus for
your Macintosh. Please delete your entire hard driving. Forward this
(16:29):
to all your friends. Yeah, so this is a good
We we've pretty much kind of drawn the line between
hackers who might show you that it's possible to create
a virus in in order to boost security. UM. Hackers
often will do that. They'll they'll find security flaws and
they'll publicize them in the hopes that someone will address
(16:50):
those flaws. And fix it, whereas crackers are the kind
of hackers who will exploit it for their own you know,
means that's true. And they're all so tasty with soup
they are. That's a good that's a good stopping point.
So we're gonna wrap things up before we go. I
thought it would be nice if we gave a shout
(17:10):
out to a sister podcast of ours. It's brand new.
It just started publishing um February really and it's called
stuff Mom Never told you. And it's a sort of
a you know, a feminine perspective on various articles that
appear on our site. And I highly recommend it um
in a masculine way. Excellent. Yea, all right, And if
(17:34):
you want to learn more about computer viruses and computer
topics in general, you can check out dozens of articles
that we have live right now at how stuff works
dot com. And we'll talk to you again really soon
for more on this and thousands of other topics. Is
it how stuff works dot com, brought to you by
(17:55):
the reinvented two thousand twelve camera. It's ready, are you
TechStuff News
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Karah Preiss
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