A.P. Lawrence

Mac Opener worm is not a worm.

(Traditional format)

Wed Oct 27 12:19:13 2004 Mac Opener worm is not a worm.
Posted by Tony Lawrence
Search Keys: security|virus
Referencing: http://www.techworld.com/opsys/news/index.cfm?NewsID=2493

Gaad. Are these people really this dumb?

All over the place I'm seeing reports like the one above warning Mac users that they too are vulnerable to all the awful viruses and worms that plaque Windows users. Naturally, as I am a Mac owner (and Linux and Windows and..), I investigated, and I have to call B.S. on this one.

This so called "worm" is a script that has to be installed by an administrator. Its comments even say so:

# This script runs in bash (as is noted by the very first line of this script)
# To install this script you need admin access or
# physical access (boot from a CD or firewire/usb, ignore permissions on the internal drive) or
# write access to either /Library/StartupItems /System/Library/StartupItems or
# write access to any existing StartupItem (which you can then replace with this script) or
# write access to the rc, crontab, or periodic files (and have them run or install the script) or
# you could trick someone who has an admin account into installing it.
# It should go in /System/Library/StartupItems or /Library/StartupItems (when it is executed it
# will move itself to /System/Library/StartupItems)

That's not a worm. It's not even a trojan, because a trojan implies you installing something bad that you thought was something else. The only use for this is when someone has physical access to your machine. It is, in fact, more of a root kit than anything else, though it really doesn't go very far with that either.

This is just nonsense FUD.

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