Apple Computer Inc. responded on Friday to an advisory issued by security software-maker Intego on Thursday. Apple said they were aware of the issue outlined by Intego and that they were investigating. While one security analyst doesn't feel this is a very big deal, he does note that this incident gives absolute proof of the vulnerability.
"We are aware of the potential issue identified by Intego and are working proactively to investigate it," said Apple in a statement given to MacCentral. "While no operating system can be completely secure from all threats, Apple has an excellent track record of identifying and rapidly correcting potential vulnerabilities."
In the advisory issued yesterday, Intego said a Trojan horse called MP3Concept (MP3Virus.Gen), exploits a weakness in Mac OS X where applications can appear to be other types of files, according to the company.
The release of the Trojan Horse, which has been classified by some as more of a proof-of-concept rather than a real Trojan Horse, may be the result of Apple's own success in marketing its operating system. As Mac OS X becomes more popular in the market, virus writers will receive more notoriety for exposing vulnerabilities...
Source: MacCentral
So lets see, application files (usually .app) can parade around with different file extensions I guess. This is a shame, and should be fixed in a (near) future update for OS X. At least I hope so. It is also important that this is proof of concept, and was not a virus out in the wild. IMO this was stupid to do this, as now Mac users are keen to this "trick," Also, I would venture to say that most Mac users are more weary of viruses then PC users just because we know (most of us) about the many many viruses on the PC.
So we have one trojan on the Mac platform, the first I can remember, verses how many viruses on Windows? I am plenty happy about that ratio. And this Mac virus didn't even "hit."
I hope Apple fixes this soon, it would look good for OS X.
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