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[Update] Apple has acknowledged this issue and reportedly is looking to the matter. Further, Intego has posted a Q&A on the topic. Intego, which bills itself as the Macintosh security specialist, has announced the first ever Trojan horse that affects Mac OS X. Moreover, the company has also released an update that can remove the contagion for their VirusBarrier application. According to Intego, "This Trojan horse, MP3Concept (MP3Virus.Gen), exploits a weakness in Mac OS X where applications can appear to be other types of files." According to the company, Trojan horse has the potential to do any of the following: • Delete all of a user's personal files; • Send an e-mail message containing a copy of itself to other users; • Infect other MP3, JPEG, GIF or QuickTime files. The interesting part... Vis-a-vis the story of the "first Mac Trojan" MacCentral quotes a missive from Symantec. Here's the entirely different spin they've put on this: "Symantec Security Response is aware of the MP3Virus.Gen Trojan. It is a proof of concept Trojan that does affect the Mac platform, however it is currently not present in the wild [emphasis added]. Symantec Security Response will continue to closely monitor this and any other potential threats to the Mac OS X platform." That's very, very different from this quote culled from Intego's press statement: "Due to the use of this technique, users can no longer safely double-click MP3 files in Mac OS X. This same technique could be used with JPEG and GIF files, though no such cases of infected graphic files have yet been seen." Stay tuned... Editor's note: Can the phrases "not in the wild" and "users can no longer safely" and "proof of concept" sit peacefully side-by-side? To this pundit's eye, something is very, very wrong here. The company that "discovered" the infection, and the only one with a fix, announces the bug and fix on the same day. They also explicitely that Mac users are no longer safe. Whereas a competitor, calls this Trojan a "proof of concept." Is it not standard procedure to first announce a pest to the community and only later release the fix? We are talking about virus protection and not merely profit, right? It looks like someone created a pest in the lab, as well as the cure, and then raised the alarm. They may not be the same person or persons, but there several facts here that beg further explanation. What's your take?
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