Macarena Virus Affects Mac OSX

A proof-of-concept virus for the Mac OS X, hilariously dubbed OSX/Macarena, has been discovered.

The worm is causing concern because new Macintosh malware is so rarely encountered compared to malicious code designed for Windows PCs. Security firm Sophos, though, maintains that it has received no reports of any customers who have encountered the malware, and only source code versions have been uncovered.

The Macarena virus, which is only 672 bytes long, infects by appending itself to infected host files. Every infected file contains the strings 'MachoMan - roy g biv' and '26/10/06'. The virus only works on Intel-based Apple Macintoshes.

However, Sophos experts believe that the malware is unlikely to ever spread successfully, a view apparently shared by the virus writer who included the following comments in his code:

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To build this thing, I use Xcode, but it is really very buggy, and it needed lots of help to produce working code

and

So many problems for so little code.

"This is a proof-of-concept virus with very limited spreading ability. Frankly you're more likely to be struck by lightning than troubled by Macarena," said Graham Cluley, senior technology consultant for Sophos. "No-one should panic, and while this is an indication that hackers are showing an increased interest in targeting the Mac OS X platform it is still a lot safer place to be than Windows."