Virus Troll Warning On Aa

[Kat Walker]

Anime Angels has been besieged by a troll that goes by "antisatan" and has also made a fake copycat alias of "draw2much" (non-capital letters, unlike the real D2M). His/her profile has a link to their personal site that automatically launches a very damaging hidden virus (VBS.Redlof.A) which has already messed with many computers, including mine and BlueKitty's. It's pretty bad, so keep an antivirus program handy when clicking on anything suspicious on AA, especially from this guy.

He's from Brazil, his site is in Portugese, and on his interests he usually says something along the lines of "Anime, manga, drawing, and Jesus Jesus Jesus!" Delete anyone with that in their info ASAP.

btw, I'm a mod at AA, but I don't have the option of banning usernames or IP's. MelMak, PsychoAnn, D2M, Keely, Lion, mossrose, anybody....go baninate this jerk.

[Fsiphskilm]

super thanks for the war

[Mr. SmartyPants]

yeah, but sometimes firefox isn't 100% good at it, sure heckuvalot better than IE though

[Stephen]

Thanks for the heads-up Kat. Tis the season to be trolling eh?

[shooraijin]

*pats Macintosh*

[Jasdero]

>.< Yucky.. Thanks for the warning~ :3

*pats Macintosh*

o.o? >.> You're saying that you don't get viruses? O.O =_= too cool...

[shooraijin]

Well, we don't get *Windows* viruses. However, there aren't any confirmed OS X specific viruses, so right now, we don't. There was an isolated report of a trojan horse a while back, but it was not widespread.

Very few viruses run on Classic Mac OS either, and they are never seen in the wild anymore.

However, my Windows installations in Virtual PC *can* get infected, since they're running Windows as an emulator. This won't taint the rest of the system, though.

Macs *can* transmit and act as harbour for PC viruses. We might forward on weird mail that doesn't do anything to us, but actually contains a virus that we didn't see, for example.

[TheMelodyMaker]

MelMak, PsychoAnn, D2M, Keely, Lion, mossrose, anybody....go baninate this jerk.

It looks as though someone else already beat me to deleting the "antisatan" account. But deleting that fake "draw2much" account is going to be a bit tougher... [Edit: Done. ^_^ ]

[Bobtheduck]

Macs *can* transmit and act as harbour for PC viruses. We might forward on weird mail that doesn't do anything to us, but actually contains a virus that we didn't see, for example.

Hmm... That's gotta suck, especially when you get blamed for it... People that think they know you, but then "you" give them a virus and they think they had your wrong and you're actually a malicious person...

[termyt]

*pats Macintosh*

My next purchase will be a MAC, but for now I use an old windows 95 machine for all of my surfing at home. Not bullet proof, but it is largely ignored now. ^_^

[shooraijin]

> Hmm... That's gotta suck, especially when you get blamed for it...

It hasn't happened to me, since I can usually tell when the mail is suspect (I use a Unix mailreader, not Apple Mail), but some of my friends have gotten burnt on this.

[ShiroiHikari]

man, that's low. glad you guys got the guy banned.

[Chichiri]

I'm in accordance with the one person who said his next PC is a Mac. Mine will be as well. Shooraijin = Teh coolest. What OS are you running again?

[shooraijin]

My PowerBook runs 9.1, but the dual G4 I use most of the time runs OS X.

[jeremy_potocki]

That's why I'm a Linux user. ^_^ I can use any system. I'm a lot more secure plus I can use both Mac and Windoze software. ^_^



I shall now do my Linux dance.

[Arnobius]

Of course, with a firewall/router in place, not downloading indescriminately and keeping the security software updated, this XP/IE user has yet to get a virus on they system

[Jman]

Nice Head up!

[Mr. SmartyPants]

oh... so... some viruses have no effect to mac users? *hugs ibook* ibook you are awesome

[shooraijin]

No Windows virus can affect a Mac (exception: it *can* affect an emulated Windows installation, such as Virtual PC, but the damage is limited to the emulated Windows disk image), many of the old Mac viruses (of which there are a much smaller number) have great difficulty with OS 9, and there are no confirmed viruses that work in OS X.

There was a single trojan horse alert for OS X that mimicked a MS Word installer, but actually tried to erase the user's Home folder. Defending against this is very difficult, unfortunately, but on the bright side it had very poor propagation and died out quickly.

[Arnobius]

No Windows virus can affect a Mac (exception: it *can* affect an emulated Windows installation, such as Virtual PC, but the damage is limited to the emulated Windows disk image), many of the old Mac viruses (of which there are a much smaller number) have great difficulty with OS 9, and there are no confirmed viruses that work in OS X.

There was a single trojan horse alert for OS X that mimicked a MS Word installer, but actually tried to erase the user's Home folder. Defending against this is very difficult, unfortunately, but on the bright side it had very poor propagation and died out quickly.

Well, they say that most Viruses fail to spread well due to bad writing.

So is Mac immune from viruses or is it just that nobody bothers since most people use Windows?

[shooraijin]

So is Mac immune from viruses or is it just that nobody bothers since most people use Windows?

I don't really think this thread should branch into another Windows vs. Mac argument, but I think that it's worth keeping in mind that there would be a lot of publicity resulting from a successful OS X worm, even if the perceived "market" is low, so there is payoff.

Regardless, for whatever the reasons (issues for or against the OS, number of authors, target market share, complexity of propagation or exploit, availability of core OS component information), there are tremendously fewer virus and general malware risks currently on the Mac. Whether one considers those reasons valid or intrinsic is another story.

[Arnobius]

I don't really think this thread should branch into another Windows vs. Mac argument, but I think that it's worth keeping in mind that there would be a lot of publicity resulting from a successful OS X worm, even if the perceived "market" is low, so there is payoff.

Regardless, for whatever the reasons (issues for or against the OS, number of authors, target market share, complexity of propagation or exploit, availability of core OS component information), there are tremendously fewer virus and general malware risks currently on the Mac. Whether one considers those reasons valid or intrinsic is another story.

Didn't mean to touch off a war. I just know next to nothing about Macs and was curious as to why there don't seem to be any stories about viruses for Macs. Perhaps framing the question in an either-or format was the wrong way to handle it.

[shooraijin]

No worries, but since I'm a confirmed strongly pro-Mac bigot, I don't want my position to be perceived as coming from a bully pulpit (and besides, like all religious wars, it usually ends up changing no one's mind ). I don't think there's much argument over whether Macs are presently susceptible to the extant crop of viruses; the argument enters on the point of why and whether those reasons are technically sound -- something that has as many subjective as objective aspects.

Anyway, anything further on the original topic?

[TheMelodyMaker]

Well, we haven't had any more virus-bearing trolls yet -- to my knowledge, anyway. But as of late I've had a thing about evil spam robots, the AA guestbook, and my own server logs getting flooded. (Please don't ask me to explain how I think those are all related... ^_^; )