Mac OS X Trojan horse/worm

February, 17 2006 12:04 AM Filed in: General
Well it seems to have finally happened. A "Trojan horse" or worm (depending on who you ask) for Mac OS X has been let loose into the wild. No need to panic, here's the deal.

The Trojan horse/worm is hidden within a package, "latestpics.tgz" and is spread via iChat. It is important to note that this file cannot replicate itself arbitrarily. It requires that you click to open the tgz file and then also click the file within. If you use iChat and find yourself on the receiving end of a file transfer consisting of "latestpics.tgz" the solution is to refuse the file and notify the sender that they have activated a Trojan horse/worm. According to Apple:

Leap-A is not a virus, it is malicious software that requires a user to download the application and execute the resulting file,” said Apple. “Apple always advises Macintosh users to only accept files from vendors and Web sites that they know and trust. We have a guide to safely handling files received from the Internet at http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=108009.



You can also find more details in Peter Cohen's article at MacWorld.

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