Submit Hint Search The Forums LinksStatsPollsHeadlinesRSS
14,000 hints and counting!


Click here to return to the 'Fooey! was: A warning on a new destructive 'trojan horse'' hint
The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. This site is not responsible for what they say.
Fooey! was: A warning on a new destructive 'trojan horse'
Authored by: aellath on May 14, '04 12:52:02AM

i've looked all round since reading about this second cry from Intego, and until i checked ten minutes ago, my usual virus info sources (McAfee, Symantec, and Sophos) had nothing on it. Even now, Sophos does not list it.
i really think this is a non-issue. It's stupidity to get something like that from somewhere *other* than a reputable download site (i don't use P2P, so i have no idea how that works) like the company itself or VersionTracker. i'm also not worried about it because *it doesn't go crawling around by itself!*
i've just spent the last week up to my eyeballs in Windows workstations suffering from this last nasty Windows worm (and as an adjunct, clearing off all the spyware that has gotten on them). This is happening in a huge school district with firewalls, etc. Every four to six months we go through this. The only folks still working are the ones who are using Macs for the bulk of their work (except for what requires a Windows station).
i've read all the posts, here and other places, and i really don't think i need to alert the schools i'm responsible for about this; i also don't think i'll ever need to alert them about a Windows-style worm attacking Macs. i don't think it's because, as many 'experts' claim, the user-base is so small that there just isn't the interest in it. i think that Apple has been more diligent than Microsoft in creating tight code and not leaving loopholes.
Someone tried to counter me on that, saying that the 'loophole' was because of the wonderful Macro feature of Windows (sounds like he bought in to the rhetoric!), and it was because Windows was so wonderfully programmable that it was vulnerable. i just pointed out AppleScript.
In over a decade of owning Macs, the only antivirus i've ever run is Disinfectant, and i stopped that with OS9. Even pre-9, i never had nVIR or WDEF; with 9 and X, i've never had anything. No, not even the AutoStart worm, as i had the auto-play turned off anyway. i run no Microsoft products and no antivirus.
So i'm pulling my hair out and cursing the PCs at work, then, whilst those workstations chug away at the interminable Security Updates and virus scans, i pull out my iBook and start blithely checking email, surfiing, and listening to audiobooks.
Windows? Virii? *Phooey!*



[ Reply to This | # ]