{"id":47,"date":"2004-04-21T21:35:50","date_gmt":"2004-04-21T11:35:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lostbiro.com\/blog\/?p=47"},"modified":"2005-08-09T21:36:12","modified_gmt":"2005-08-09T11:36:12","slug":"mac-virus-fears-unfounded","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/lostbiro.com\/blog\/?p=47","title":{"rendered":"mac virus fears unfounded"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>A big THANK YOU to The Barrow in The Australian IT for setting the record straight on a supposed Trojan horse virus that allegedly masquerades as an mp3 music file and targets macintosh computers running operating system 10 (OS-X).<\/p>\n<p>Phew &#8211; us mac users can play mp3s again safely! Last week the press was full &#8211; and I mean full of commentary as they talked about the dangers of a virus that attacks mac OSX operating systems &#8211; now these machines have been blissfully free of virus threats for about three years now &#8211; good old robust unix-based system! So it was with some trepidation that I began to read of a trojan horse supposedly uncovered by an anti-virus company (hmmm now THAT should have been a warning in itself &#8211; like in whose interests is it to advertise a new virus if not an anti-virus company?). Anyhow it all turned out to be much ado about not very much \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n<p>It seems there was a piece of software that ran as an application but looked like an MP3 music file was actually completely harmless. Apparently the software involved was real &#8211; a proof-of concept showing that it was possible to create an application that was both an application and a legitimate music file &#8211; all in one. The problem was that he named the application virus.mp3 &#8211; and that&#8217;s when the fun started. After mentioning the software on a bulletin board, it seems some enterprising anti-virus company did a bit of &#8216;sexing-up&#8217; of the information and promptly cried wolf &#8211; without the software ever leaving the lab in which it was created! So it hasn&#8217;t spread, it is not in the public arena and it is incapable of malicious activity. In short &#8211; IT IS NOT A VIRUS DUDE! And this is <a href=\"http:\/\/www.macnn.com\/articles\/04\/04\/08\/trojan.horse.details\/\">further confirmed in Mac News Network<\/a><\/p>\n<p>cheers<br \/>\nJerry (Canberra, Australia)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A big THANK YOU to The Barrow in The Australian IT for setting the record straight on a supposed Trojan horse virus that allegedly masquerades as an mp3 music file and targets macintosh computers running operating system 10 (OS-X). Phew &#8211; us mac users can play mp3s again safely! Last week the press was full [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-47","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-new-media","category-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/lostbiro.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/lostbiro.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/lostbiro.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/lostbiro.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/lostbiro.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=47"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/lostbiro.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/lostbiro.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=47"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/lostbiro.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=47"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/lostbiro.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=47"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}