Did you know that the very first HyperCard virus to afflict early Macs contained a then-timely endorsement of Michael Dukakis for President? Or that Microsoft was responsible for the "Concept" macro virus which affected both Mac and PC owners who opened files in Word?
Sophos Labs' Naked Security blog has a rundown of some of the dubious moments in Mac history - from the malware that plagued its earliest iterations to the new threats facing users today.
One of the more interesting stories in Sophos consultant Graham Cluley's chronicling of Mac malware is that the earliest virus aimed at Apple machines hit two years before the first Mac was released.
Dubbed "Elk Cloner," it was crafted by Rick Skrenta and targeted Apple II boot drives. The teenage Skrenta proved himself both a coding savant and a poetaster; he included rhyming couplets which would appear whenever an infected machine booted 50 times:
Elk Cloner: The program with a personality
It will get on all your disks
It will infiltrate your chips
Yes, it's Cloner!
It will stick to you like glue
It will modify RAM too
Send in the Cloner!
Another wacky infection that played folk music spread amongst Belgian Mac users in 1990, Cluley revealed.
As the OS evolved, so too did the frequency and complexity of attacks. BadBunny was both creepy and trend-setting when Sophos uncovered it in 2007: a Mac OS X virus that showed a man in a pink bunny suit hooking up with a half-naked woman. Additionally, scam artists began to rely on Mac-specific scareware in attempts to glean sensitive information from unwitting users.
Recent Mac malware attacks have more and more resembled those that constantly take aim at Windows users, the expert said.
"Scareware attacks continued to cause problems for Mac owners throughout the summer of 2011 with many users coming to realize that perhaps an anti-virus program might be wise after all," wrote Cluley, adding that malicious remote hacking Trojans were becoming more commonplace. (via Naked Security)
Are you a Mac owner? Have you ever experienced any form of virus or malware? Let us know in the comment section.
