Just a quick followup to to my last post. I’d advise anyone running OS X to go download and install the free anti-virus software, ClamXav. Viruses and such beasties aren’t really as much of a threat (and in fact the one out this week marks the first one to show up in the wild), but since that software’s free, stable, and reliable, won’t hurt to have it. And like all of the non-free anti-virus programs out there, it has now been updated to detect this new virus.
The day after news about the Oompa Loompa worm/virus/trojan/gunkything hit, a proof of concept worm was announced by security software company F-Secure (actually the first report I read said they had created it, but I’ve seen no confirmation of that so that may have been just an error). Of course, to get this one you would have to have a Mac with bluetooth, bluetooth would have to be on, you would have to be within the limited (30 feet or less) range of an infected Mac with Bluetooth, would have to be running an OS version earlier than 10.3.9 (the final release of Panther) or 10.4.1 (the current version is 10.4.5), and would have to accept three sudden bluetooth file transfers. So yes, even if that one made it out into the wild, it probably wouldn’t get every far.
So if you’re on a Mac, make sure you run Software Update once a month or so (it’s the second option down in the Apple menu) and go download and install ClamXav.
(And as may be obvious from the last several posts, this blog is becoming more “blog-like”
due in large part to my need to get into the habit of writing more.)