New virus preys on Mac-users’ sense of superiority
Posted by Igor
Just weeks after a report praising OS X’s near invulnerability when it comes to computer viruses, a new Mac-only virus has appeared and is spreading like wildfire through the Mac community. Mac users receiving an e-mail from someone they know with the file attachment “Win_Sux.zip� should think twice before opening it, although few apparently are.
Why is this virus spreading so quickly?
Jim Opet of Symantec explains, “A typical e-mail with the ‘Win_Sux’ virus has a subject heading of ‘Top 100 reasons why Macs are Better than PCs’. To a Mac user, the prospect of discovering 100 fresh arguments for why a Mac is better than a PC is even more irresistible than the promise of nude Anna Kournikova pictures.�
“I couldn’t help myself,� says Jeff Kirsh, a 23-year-old Mac user of 10 years. “I have so many ‘Windows-PC’ using friends who are always giving me crap about my Mac not being able to play the latest games or not being able to sync my Palm and cell phone. I was dying for some new material for our arguments.“
How deeply does this need to bash Windows run in the Mac community? Well, apparently pretty deep. Whereas most Windows-based computer viruses simply need to entice the user to click an e-mail attachment in order to spread, the Mac-only “Win_sux� virus operates a bit differently. In order for their Mac become infected, a user must first click on the attachment, then print out a form, fill in all required fields in the form, fax back a notarized copy of the form to a 1-900 number (at a charge of $1.99) then wait 24 hours for a second e-mail to be sent to them. This second e-mail asks the user to complete a brief online survey (10 to 15 minutes depending on their connection speed) where they are asked for their personal banking information. Only after the user has completed the survey and manually entered the addresses of up to 100 of his friends and relatives does he actually get to see the list of reasons why the Mac is better than a PC.
“The worst part,� says Kirsch, “is that the list only has 94 reasons. It is a total rip-off. Oh, and it deleted my pictures and system folders. That sucked too.�
wait…what?
so is there a virus?
Ness: Did you even read the article?
Ness rules
ness im confused too, i read it but I can’t work out where the virus part comes into it. Can anyone link me to an AV vendor page about the virus and what vunelerability it would use? Is this patched yet?
Anna Kournikova has pretty face and nice curves too..`’