Low End Mac's Virus Page

Read our Nimda Worm Special Report

Why, you may ask, does Low End Mac track Windows viruses? As a public service - our logs show that over 40% of you visit this site on Windows PCs. We sometimes have virus links before the big PC and general news sites. Imagine the look of surprise when you ask your IS Director about the latest Windows virus, the one you just read about on Low End Mac, and he hasn't seen anything yet....

Besides, viruses are one area where Mac users can pick on Windows users. We don't have Melissa, Love Bug, etc. Every few years someone creates a Mac virus, giving us one more pro-Mac argument.

A Mac virus is a fairly rare thing. The Autostart Worm can be disabled by turning off CD-ROM autorun in the QuickTime control panel. However, the Windows world knows over 20,000 viruses, including email viruses such as Melissa and LoveLetter, which can inundate your mailbox, send data back to their creators, and really make a mess of a PC's hard drive.

Latest Viruses

  • Two new epidemics wreak havok on PCs, Seng Li Peng, atNewYork.com, 10.03. Not one new Windows virus this week, but two. Opasoft and Tanatos threaten Windows users.
  • Bugbear virus spreading rapidly, Paul Roberts, Yahoo/IDG, 10.03. "Once activated, the virus shuts down vital processes used by antivirus and firewall software, records user keystrokes to capture passwords, sends copies of itself...."
  • It's a bug, a bear and a worm, Michelle Delio, Wired, 10.03. "...the Bugbear worm, also known as Tanatos, is coded to allow a malicious hacker complete control over infected computers." [Windows computers, of course.

Recent Viruses

Other Virus Articles

Homepage worm

Melissa.W (a.k.a. Melissa-X, Melissa 2001)

  • Mac users hit by Melissa macro virus, The Register, 1/19/2001. "The likely suspect in this case is not Office but Outlook. Microsoft released a public Outlook for Mac beta at MacWorld Expo last week, and we wonder whether it's that that has provided long-infected documents with a path to other systems."
  • Melissa-X disguised as Mac doc, ZDNet, 1/18/2001. "The virus . . . can be spread on either a PC or a Macintosh. Like other Melissa variants, though, only Windows PCs will send mass email copies of the infected file."
  • Melissa comes to the Mac, Macworld, 1/18/2001. New Melissa variant can infect Macs running Office 2001 and Word 98.
  • See McAfee and Symantec reports on Melissa (also see The Melissa Virus).

Love Bug II

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