Mac compromised?

[arinlares]

on a social networking site, i found a discussion that drew my attention. apparently, a Mac OSX user had a trojan horse on his computer. I'll have the thread linked here soon, after I find it. Apparently, the user noticed a dip in his internet connection, contacts apple, and they confirm/delete it. i'm not sure if it's real, but i'm worried hackers might be closing in on BSD (OSX is BSD/Darwin, right?), and finally Linux, if it is real. I'll have a link soon (i'm tired of viruses, been hearing/reading about them for days).

PS: I know about Unix virus tests in labs, but one might be in the wild, now.

[jayd512]

While it's true that Linux is at a far lower risk of being infected by your garden variety virus, the danger does in fact remain. I tried to find an article similar to the one you referenced, but found mostly older articles. I did however find something on Wikipedia: Linux malware - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. According to that, there are still less than a thousand infections floating around for *nix OS's. Compare that to the hundreds of thousands for Windows, though. And the beauty of it is that even those infectious files need privilages to do any real damage. So, in my opinion, caution will be your main protection against them. Combine that with something like ClamAV and I'm not to worried at all.

And, yes, OSX is Darwin.

[arinlares]

HUNDREDS of THOUSANDS!?! that's a comfort for an already paranoid Windows user. taking the root/guest unix model in mind, would a similar system put in place in Windows improve security? i'm still in the "Unix is safe(r)" camp. i'm posting on my Wii right now, but i'll have the blog linked. it's only a few days old.

[jayd512]

Creating an Admin account and a user account in Windows can increase security from infection, to some extent. Most viruses in Windows, if infecting a user account, will still tear up the user account in question but usually won't get into the Admin account.

[arinlares]

Found it: http://geeks.pirillo.com/forum/topic...Topic%3A784799

if a virus attacked a normal user account, and did it's damage, would it be right to assume the account could be wiped out and replaced? (i have a feeling this is SO the wrong place for this type of question )

[jayd512]

It would be possible in a fair amount of circumstances.

[arinlares]

wow, didn't expect answers concerning windows... thanks, that's about it. Well, i don't think I showed anybody new then, but it's still a bit interesting, i think, and works as a cautionary tale, like jayd512's warning to dual-booters. thanks for that, too, jayd512.