A worm – dubbed AutoStart 9805 – spread rapidly in the desktop publishing community via removable media, using the CD-ROM AutoPlay feature of QuickTime 2.5+ĭavid Harley of Macvirus tells me that he remembers watching with interest as reports of Autostart spread from Asia to the rest of the world. It was in Hong Kong, in 1998, when the next significant Mac malware outbreak was first spotted. Mac users were unaffected by this new strain of macro virus until the release of Excel 98 for Mac meant they could become victims.
Laroux, the first Excel virus, was released. Thousands of macro viruses followed, many affecting Microsoft Office for Mac. Microsoft accidentally shipped the first ever Word macro virus, Concept, on CD ROM. The MDEF virus (aka Garfield) emerged, infecting application and system files on the Mac. One HyperCard virus showed the message “Dukakis for President” before self-destructing. HyperCard viruses emerged that could run on early versions of Apple’s Mac OS. Source code was later made available, causing a rash of variants. The nVIR virus began to infect Macs, spreading mainly by floppy disk. What may surprise some Apple fans is that the Elk Cloner boot sector virus predates IBM PC viruses by some years. On every 50th boot the Elk Cloner virus would display a short poem:Įlk Cloner: The program with a personality In 1982, 15-year-old student Rich Skrenta wrote the Elk Cloner virus, capable of infecting the boot sector of Apple II computers. The first virus to affect Apple computers wasn’t written for the Macintosh (that iconic computer wasn’t set to appear until 1984) but is of historic interest none the less. From the early 1980s, right up until the present day, here are some of the highlights in the history of Apple Mac malware. To help some of the discussions, here’s a brief overview of some of the malware we have seen infecting Apple computers. It’s clearly an emotive subject, with strongly held views on both sides. There’s been a lot of discussion in the media recently about the threat that malware poses on the Mac OS X platform.
Since this article was first published we have released a revised and more complete history of Mac malware.
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