Filed under: Cult of Mac
$500 bounty for first OS X virus
Wil Shipley, of Delicious Monster, feels it is about time that we as Mac users rise up and say, 'We do NOT have herpes.' Wait, that's not quite right...Ah, he thinks that we should be touting the fact that there are no known viruses for Mac OS X instead of focusing on the fact that sooner or later there will be one, and he is thinking about putting his money where his mouth is. The proposed rules for this 'contest' are that you prove to Wil that someone running a variant of OS X 10.0 (fully patched) was infected with a virus that exploits a flaw in the OS (not a Word macro) before September 20, 2005 and Wil pays you $500. If no one collects then Macs rule, or something.
The genius of this challenge is that the cut off point is in the past, so this won't encourage folks to create a virus for 500 bucks.
![TUAW [Cafepress]](http://www.blogsmithmedia.com/www.tuaw.com/media/tuaw-cafepress-promo.png)
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
iFelix said 6:37AM on 9-27-2005
'We do NOT have herpes.' Wait, that's not quite right...
giggles, wipes coffee off screen...
Reply
alivicwil said 6:43AM on 9-27-2005
If no one collects than Macs rule, or something.
Maybe, "If no one collects, then Macs rule" ??
Also, there's a preposition missing before the date...
I love TUAW, btw!
Reply
damax said 6:54AM on 9-27-2005
I disagree. The past of tomorrow is today and hell, what do you know about users out there running fully patched 10.0.? Any encouragement to create any viruses should be considered for what it is, an encouragemnet to increase the number of viruses existing out there. At least I consider it an unnecessary provocation to virus developers. Real smart, yes.
Reply
Gareth Burleigh said 7:17AM on 9-27-2005
Or how about running a competition to see who can make a keygen for his programme and send it out to everybody using OSX.
What an idiot.
Reply
Steve said 7:20AM on 9-27-2005
I concure with Damax. Why encourage something I have never had to deal with. If people want their virus infected Windows machines let them have them. I don't think we should be challenging any idiot out there to make our live more difficult. BAD IDEA
Reply
Varun Seth said 7:47AM on 9-27-2005
One of these days someone is going to pay attention to people who are so confident macs are virus free and make us one. This will also be the day I beat Wil with $500 of my own.
Reply
Jonathan said 8:00AM on 9-27-2005
A Mac virus would be stamped on so hard, the culprit hung out to dry and generally be so despised that it wouold be the last... Stick with Windows chaps. Its povbably going to get easier with Vista (which has already had its first one).
Reply
Chris Meisenzahl said 6:04PM on 9-27-2005
Doing it for the past is a very interesting angle. Before I read the details I didn't think it was a good diea to encourage this.
Chris
http://amateureconblog.blogspot.com/
Reply
fungible said 9:15AM on 9-27-2005
What I don't understand, which is assuming that viruses are possible on OSX (I assume they obviously are), is the reason why there aren't any. Yes, it's a small user base - but it's a very vocal one, one that manages to piss off a lot of people every time a Windows/Mac flamewar erupts. If you were a Windows hacker, and every day you were taunted about how secure the Mac is, wouldn't you be compelled to write a virus just to spite those people? How come this hasn't happened?
Reply
Jonathan said 9:19AM on 9-27-2005
Is this really necessary? I've personally enjoyed computer on a MAC without viruses, and wouldn't want to start up someone's sick desire to create one.
Reply
stridey said 10:17AM on 9-27-2005
Let's get it clear folks: nobody is going to create a virus because of this contest. That's why there's a cut-off date. He just wants to know if there *has* been a virus already, or if Macs are truly virus-free to date. If there has been a virus, wouldn't you want to know about it? And if there hasn't, wouldn't you want to bask in it? There's no evil in knowledge.
Reply
icerabbit said 10:22AM on 9-27-2005
Not again! Didn't we go through this once with MacMice already?!
Shame on him & Delicious Monster. Anybody who proposes to pay for an OS X virus shoud be banned from using Macs for life. This is just infuriating. If he has too much money, he should give it to a cause promoting computer use in certain schools & neighborhoods, rather than starting virus writing contests. Ttssss.
Reply
icerabbit said 10:23AM on 9-27-2005
PS: What's with the timing? Prove you had a working virus last week?
Reply
Joshua Ochs said 10:34AM on 9-27-2005
Of course, it wouldn't matter too much if he said $500 ongoing; if there are no vectors, then how is a virus going to infect a system?
Mac OS X ships with no services turned on and no ports open - certainly no network worm will be able to attack it. Due to the permissions structure of UNIX, you wouldn't be able to start network processes on well-known ports to run your own viral server, and firewalls everywhere will block unknown high ports (again, not sure how you'd get in to begin with, but for the sake of argument). Finally, social engineering - a single file in an attachment is not executable in OS X. Mail and others will not set the executable bit, so shell scripts and others will be plain text files. Even if you somehow get through all of this, doing anything of consequence requires the user to give up their administrator password, unlike Windows where everyone *runs* as administrator because it's too damn hard to do anything otherwise.
This is a moot point. There are no vectors for a virus on Mac OS X.
Reply
Scott said 11:01AM on 9-27-2005
Ah yes, here we have the folks at TUAW displaying stupidity at it's finest! The "genius" of this is that it's "in the past, so it won't encourage other's to write virus' for the mac"? Are you flipping kidding me? You believe that, I've got some swamp land for you dirt cheap in Florida...
I'll give anyone $1000.00 dollars if they beat this idiot with a broom handle or take his idiot idea website down! There, how's that for a challenge?
Reply
Joe said 11:06AM on 9-27-2005
How on earth could the creator of one of the best apps for OS X be so stupid as to come up with this dumbass idea?
Hold on - maybe Delicious Library was only created by the guy who left to join Apple leaving this Doofus in charge of PR...
Reply
Ron Evry said 11:19AM on 9-27-2005
The $500 offer, even if was ongoing, would be superfluous. Anybody who creates virii, would love to have the reputation of creating the FIRST successful virus of Mac OS X. They would become a hacker legend. I mean, any third grader could write a virus for Windows.
Reply
John said 11:34AM on 9-27-2005
1. 10.0? That's so four years ago.
2. That said, four years later there are still no 10.x viruses in the world/wild.
3. Symantec is dismayed at that because their sales of software to Mac users is abyssmal.
4. Same goes for other manufacturers such as McAfee, but they're at least smart enough not to comment publicly.
5. Can it really be enticing enough to risk a public flogging that would come if somebody did? I mean, what's one more on top of the 70,000 PC viruses, as opposed to a public lynching by being the first to even claim you have a Mac virus (not to mention circumventing the Unix permission structures to actually infect a computer without the assistance of the owner/administrator).
6. Did somebody call for a beat down on this guy? Is there a sign up sheet?
Reply
PXLated said 12:49PM on 9-27-2005
I see that many of the posters here either didn't read the article, contest rules, etc. or have a very real comprehension problem. :-)
Reply
Pascal said 12:57PM on 9-27-2005
You guys should read what he wrote on his blog carefully before critizising...
First the dead line is not what you think, but the 16th of October and he has never invited anyone to do something bad (above all to write any virus), but to do some kind of "litterature review".
Reply