This week a Mac security specialist company, Intego, issued a security warning to its customers identifying what they claim to be the first Trojan Horse “virus” that can affect Mac OS X. Dubbed MP3 Concept (MP3Virus.Gen) – a catchy name, you must admit – the Trojan Horse exploits a “weakness in Mac OS X where applications can appear to be other types of files. Before I go on (and you rush out to buy Virex or Norton AniVirus), let me point out that this Trojan Horse exists only as a “proof of concept”, created by Intego itself. That’s what they’re paid to do – explore potential weaknesses and come up with solutions to prevent exploitation.

Here’s how “MP3Virus.Gen” works. Within every file on your Mac is code that tells the Mac the file type, as well as what application to use to open the file. This code is called the ID3 tag. For example, when you double-click on a file called “letter.doc”, created with Microsoft Word, your Mac reads the ID3 tag, and opens the file with Word. The ID3 tag also tells your Mac what icon to represent the file with. Pretty straightforward. But what if you could mess with the ID3 tag, so that the file “looked” like a data file, but in reality was a program, or application, that would open and begin doing nefarious stuff to your computer? That’s what a Trojan Horse does.

Again, this type of dastardly data has not appeared “in the wild” yet. I will stay on top of this and keep you up-to-date on developments.

Attention High School and Middle School students and teachers! The deadline for submission of entries in the 2nd Annual Maine Student Web Design Awards is only one week away! Don’t forget those great prizes, including Apple iMac computers, professional-grade web and graphic design software from Adobe and Macromedia, and many more, including CASH! For more details on entries, point your web browser at http://www.mswda.org.

Speaking of prizes, two new sponsors have been added. Bath Savings Institution will sponsor a cash award, and Acker’s Acres will be donating passes for Disc Golf. Many thanks to all the great sponsors for their support of this exciting program.

But now for the really big MSWDA news. Maine Governor John Baldacci will be addressing the MSWDA contestants at the awards ceremony, scheduled for Saturday, May 15th, at Maine’s WB51 studios in Westbrook.

© 2004 Peter F. Zimowski