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Speaker 1: Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve Camray.

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Speaker 1: It's ready. Are you get in touch with technology with

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Speaker 1: tex Stuff from how stuff works dot com. Hello, everybody,

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Speaker 1: welcome to tech stuff. My name is Chris Polette. I'm

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Speaker 1: an editor here at how stuff works dot com, and today,

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Speaker 1: sitting next to me, as usual, is senior writer Jonathan Strickland.

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Speaker 1: Hey there, um, Today we're gonna talk about again the

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Speaker 1: shady side of computing. Yes, it seems we talked about

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Speaker 1: this a lot. It turns out that, well, it's more

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Speaker 1: in a pretty big shady side. Well, you know, Okay,

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Speaker 1: Well let's look at it this way. We can talk

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Speaker 1: about the all the easy stuff and then we go, hey,

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Speaker 1: everything's working normally. Well, that's got it for today. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: that's true. That's a pretty short So we're going to

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Speaker 1: talk We talked once before about computer viruses. Actually a

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Speaker 1: couple of times before we've talked about computer viruses, and

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Speaker 1: today we wanted to talk about a specific pair of

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Speaker 1: trojans that recently attacked a computing system that, for a

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Speaker 1: very long time was seen as practically unassailable. That's true.

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Speaker 1: We're talking about the Macintosh and Honestly, you might be

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Speaker 1: surprised to know this, but the very very first virus

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Speaker 1: was written by somebody named Rich Scranta, and he actually

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Speaker 1: created this as a practical joke when he was in

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Speaker 1: the ninth grade for his apple to computer lab at school.

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Speaker 1: And it was just a very simple thing that every

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Speaker 1: once in a while and put up a message on

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Speaker 1: the when the computer would boot up saying essentially, this

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Speaker 1: is a virus. I mean I could read the whole thing,

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Speaker 1: but um, just kind of a novelty thing. He did

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Speaker 1: it to test the theory that it could be done.

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Speaker 1: And now viruses are more than twenty five years old,

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Speaker 1: but they have gotten significantly more malicious. Right, Yeah, there,

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Speaker 1: there there are still viruses that are just jokes, you know.

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Speaker 1: There's still viruses that go around where all it is

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Speaker 1: is just something that messes with you and makes you

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Speaker 1: think you're going crazy because your computer is not acting right. Um,

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Speaker 1: but those are you know, those are annoying, But those

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Speaker 1: aren't the ones that make the news. The ones that

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Speaker 1: make the news are the ones, of course, that cause

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Speaker 1: billions and billions of dollars worth of damages when people

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Speaker 1: and corporations, when their systems just completely crash and no

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Speaker 1: one communicates with anyone else. That's true. And there are

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Speaker 1: a couple of things we need to point out before

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Speaker 1: you get in in deep. We need to point out

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Speaker 1: that you were mentioning that we were going to discuss

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Speaker 1: two trojans, and we should point out the difference in

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Speaker 1: a trojan and a virus. I think um the virus

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Speaker 1: is a self replicating program. Um it um basically will copy.

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Speaker 1: For example, it will copy information from your address book.

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Speaker 1: It will send itself to other people in your email

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Speaker 1: message saying hey, you need to open this file. It's urgent.

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Speaker 1: And when you do, you load it into your computer,

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Speaker 1: which then you know, propagates and continues to do. A

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Speaker 1: trojan doesn't replicate by itself. UM. It's something that maybe

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Speaker 1: somebody would say, do you have any viruses on your computer?

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Speaker 1: Download this and find out now, And you download it

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Speaker 1: and you install it, and lo and behold. It's not

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Speaker 1: a virus protection program. It is, in need, a trojan horse,

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Speaker 1: and it gets in and messages with your computer. Both

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Speaker 1: are kinds of malware which you know mouth being bad,

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Speaker 1: dangerous software. And of course it's called a trojan after

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Speaker 1: the trojan horse, which you know, we all have heard

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Speaker 1: of it. You know, lots of soldiers hidd inside the

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Speaker 1: trojan horse. It was pulled into Troy. They all popped

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Speaker 1: out and then they started causing a ruckus as soldiers

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Speaker 1: are want to do. Now, the trojans on your computer,

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Speaker 1: same sort of thing. Hopefully they're not on your computer,

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Speaker 1: but the trojans that could be on your computer, same

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Speaker 1: sort of thing. It's a packet that has inside it

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Speaker 1: something nasty, and it can be a virus. So a

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Speaker 1: trojan can deliver a virus which could then self replicate,

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Speaker 1: or it could be something else. And one of the

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Speaker 1: more prevalent trojan attacks, or at least one of the

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Speaker 1: ones that gets the most news, are the kind that's

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Speaker 1: set up butt nets, and these are programs the trojans.

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Speaker 1: These trojans carry programs that give a remote user access

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Speaker 1: to the core of your work computer. So suddenly someone

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Speaker 1: somewhere else, possibly on the other side of the world,

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Speaker 1: can make your computer do things. And if they're clever enough,

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Speaker 1: they can make them do things. Make your computer do things,

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Speaker 1: and you don't. You're not even aware that your computer

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Speaker 1: is acting abnormally. Well, if you were, then they could

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Speaker 1: do something about it, or at least stop it. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: at least turn your computer off if nothing else. But

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Speaker 1: but yeah, if IF they're clever. And the reason why

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Speaker 1: I say if is a lot of these programs tend

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Speaker 1: to be propagated by people who themselves are not great programmers.

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Speaker 1: They tend to grab script from other websites and use them,

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Speaker 1: and they're called script kiddies. Um, but let's get to

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Speaker 1: the specifics of the Mac trojans that we wanted to

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Speaker 1: talk about now. For a very long time, MAX have

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Speaker 1: been seen as sort of, uh, much more safe than PCs, right,

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Speaker 1: They're they're seen as you know, people are very proud.

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Speaker 1: They'll say, I don't have to worry about viruses. I

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Speaker 1: use a Mac. That's true. Um, this is a principle,

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Speaker 1: which is it has a at least a rhyming name.

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Speaker 1: Security through obscurity. Basically, why bother writing viruses for the

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Speaker 1: Mac crowd, because they're only ten or so of them

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Speaker 1: out there, right, so they don't even bother. And and

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Speaker 1: on top of that, the Mac operating system and on

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Speaker 1: hardware is a closed system. It's not like PCs where

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Speaker 1: you can you know, you can get a circuit board

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Speaker 1: from one place and you can get memory from another place.

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Speaker 1: Max are an all in one package that you get

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Speaker 1: from Apple, and you can upgrade and everything. But for

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Speaker 1: the most part, it's a closed system. So again, security

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Speaker 1: through obscurity. It's not something that is widely understood. Not

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Speaker 1: people don't don't sit there and do a lot of

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Speaker 1: Mac hacks. I mean there are people who do them,

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Speaker 1: but there are fewer than the PC hacks. That's true.

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Speaker 1: That's true. Um. And for a long time that that

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Speaker 1: people in the Mac crowd of sort of speaking as

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Speaker 1: someone who is a Mac user more often than not. Um,

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Speaker 1: you know, we're sort of under that mindset. We're saying, hey,

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Speaker 1: I don't really need to spend seventy five dollars on

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Speaker 1: a piece of antivirus software because my computer is safe. Um.

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Speaker 1: And Apple explains that, you know, they think that their

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Speaker 1: system is safe. They're not really particularly concerned about it,

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Speaker 1: except not too long ago. A few months ago, they

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Speaker 1: actually had a page up on their website and everybody

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Speaker 1: took notice of the fact that they were saying, well,

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Speaker 1: maybe you should install some antivirus software. Probably wouldn't be

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Speaker 1: a bad idea, and that which kind of deviates from there. Well,

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Speaker 1: the OS ten operating system is a very secure system.

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Speaker 1: You don't really need to worry about viruses. It's a

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Speaker 1: selling point, it's a marketing point for them to UH

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Speaker 1: to say how secure it is, right, And I think

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Speaker 1: this is sort of the price of popularity UM. Mac

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Speaker 1: sales UH increased significantly over two thousand and eight before

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Speaker 1: the economic downturn, which affected all computer sales. But they're

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Speaker 1: up to a of market share now, right, so, and

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Speaker 1: that's significant. So now that there are more Mac users

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Speaker 1: out there, there's more of an incentive for someone who

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Speaker 1: wants to create malware to create it for the Mac

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Speaker 1: because now they have a significant population they can affect. Now,

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Speaker 1: before if you were like, well, if people have PCs

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Speaker 1: and one person has a Mac, it makes more sense

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Speaker 1: for me to program something for the ninety people because

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Speaker 1: I'm gonna get more hits that way. But if the

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Speaker 1: population of computer users gets high enough, then it totally

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Speaker 1: makes sense. Okay, well I'm gonna switch gears because these

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Speaker 1: people not only are there more of them, but they

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Speaker 1: have been lulled into a false sense of security and

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Speaker 1: I can take advantage of that. That's true now. The

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Speaker 1: the Trojans that hit in January of two thousand nine

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Speaker 1: that affect max effect a very specific subset of Mac users,

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Speaker 1: and I like to call them the naughty ones. So,

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Speaker 1: in other words, right now, if using a Mac is

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Speaker 1: still very safe, I should I'm gonna go out and

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Speaker 1: say it right now, using a Mac. If you're using

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Speaker 1: a Mac and you're being a law abiding, um, you know,

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Speaker 1: upstanding citizen on the web, then you're going to be

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Speaker 1: pretty safe using a Mac. But if you're a filthy, dirty,

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Speaker 1: pirate yar and you're trying to steal software from the Mac,

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Speaker 1: you might be in for a nasty surprise. That's true.

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Speaker 1: Um and all started with a suite of software that

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Speaker 1: those of you who are not Mac users may not

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Speaker 1: be familiar with. It's called I Work. Um, it's a collection,

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Speaker 1: it's it's not really a A and Microsoft Office killer.

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Speaker 1: But there are three applications that are part of the suite.

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Speaker 1: Pages which is a you know, word processing program, Keynote,

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Speaker 1: which is a presentation program, and Numbers, which is a

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Speaker 1: spreadsheet program. And uh, oddly enough, these are very much

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Speaker 1: like three of the major applications in Office. But um,

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Speaker 1: there was a pirate ID version going around, a broken

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Speaker 1: version that people were starting to download, and uh, it

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Speaker 1: contained more than just a copy of I work, it

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Speaker 1: also contained a trojan horse and so this was propagated

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Speaker 1: along or spread along bit torrent. So people using bit

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Speaker 1: torrent to download a pirated copy of I work um

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Speaker 1: received a trojan that installed as part of the eye

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Speaker 1: work Services installation process. And um it gave someone no

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Speaker 1: one's really sure who at this point, as when we're

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Speaker 1: recording this root access to the victimized computer. And that's

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Speaker 1: that's a bad thing. That's what you can build a

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Speaker 1: bot net or a zombie computer army out of are

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Speaker 1: these computers that have a compromised root access system. It

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Speaker 1: means that someone else can then sort of fiddle with

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Speaker 1: your computer and make it do things like UM distributed

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Speaker 1: denial of service attacks or spreading spam, that kind of thing.

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Speaker 1: That's sort of what most zombie computer armies are are

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Speaker 1: used for. Yeah, the name of this one actually is

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Speaker 1: OS ten dot Trojan dot ice services dot A catchy Yeah. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: well they all are. They have these fancy names. And

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Speaker 1: it also depends on which, uh, which anti virus authority

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Speaker 1: you're talking to, because at least on the PC side,

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Speaker 1: usually each one has its own name for the each

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Speaker 1: virus that is even more confusing. But in this case, yes,

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Speaker 1: yep and uh, it's known to bury parts of itself

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Speaker 1: very deep in the system. UM. As a matter of fact,

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Speaker 1: the experts say that if you've got this on there

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Speaker 1: on your machine, it's probably best to do a clean

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Speaker 1: installation of your operating system and just format your hard

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Speaker 1: drive again again. Back up your computer, right. It's always important.

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Speaker 1: We say it over and over, and you think we're joking.

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Speaker 1: We're not joking. Not that I do it myself. I'm

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Speaker 1: guilty of not doing I have been known to go

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Speaker 1: a long time between backups, and it has in the past.

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Speaker 1: I've I've become legendary in the office for having some

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Speaker 1: hissy fits when I've had problems with my computer. Yep, yep,

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Speaker 1: manly hissy fits. I should add, if you say so, okay, um,

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Speaker 1: And then you know that this happened, uh, I guess

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Speaker 1: technically it was late two thousand eight when it started

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Speaker 1: to show up, but you know, it was the holiday,

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Speaker 1: so we waited to be worried about it until the

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Speaker 1: new year, and the whole the whole eye work O

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Speaker 1: nine didn't even really come out until UM Macworld that's true,

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Speaker 1: but which was immediately after writing year, so yeah, exactly. Um,

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Speaker 1: but there was a variant that showed up not too

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Speaker 1: long afterward. I just call it B. Just call it B. Yeah.

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Speaker 1: Well it's the blah blah blah blah blah blah blah

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Speaker 1: B instead of A. Okay, I mean, I don't have

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Speaker 1: it written down in front. Un Lets you get away

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Speaker 1: with that as you're you're right. So this is a

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Speaker 1: second trojan, very similar to the first one. Um, but

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Speaker 1: this one was attached to pirated versions of Adobe Photoshop

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Speaker 1: c S four for Apple, So again an illegal uh

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Speaker 1: application and pirated application. It's is the one that's carrying

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Speaker 1: this trojan. And if you went out and you bought

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Speaker 1: a copy of Adobe Photoshop c S four, you're fine.

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Speaker 1: I mean, that's that's a legitimate copy. It's not carrying

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Speaker 1: anything dangerous. It's only for the people who are saying, hey,

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Speaker 1: I want this, but I don't want to shell out

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Speaker 1: the you know, several hundred dollars it's gonna cost me

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Speaker 1: to buy this program, so I'm just gonna steal it. Well,

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Speaker 1: they're the ones who are paying the price right now,

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Speaker 1: because they're the ones who had their computers infected. So, uh,

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Speaker 1: if you were a a Mac user, the first and

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Speaker 1: most important thing you should know about all this is

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Speaker 1: you're not completely immune from viruses. There's there, you know,

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Speaker 1: no operating system. Even an Apple spokesperson said this, no

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Speaker 1: operating system is a hundred percent safe. There there's always

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Speaker 1: some vulnerability. And you know, of course, the manufacturers, the

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Speaker 1: software manufacturers. Microsoft is famous for patching on regular intervals

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Speaker 1: UM and Apple does sends out intervals patches to UM.

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Speaker 1: The thing is, you know, you need to be aware

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Speaker 1: that it can happen. And investing in any virus software

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Speaker 1: isn't really a bad idea. Yeah, it's expensive and there's

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Speaker 1: not a lot of free anty virus software. UM I

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Speaker 1: would be wary, especially of downloading anything that has a

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Speaker 1: pop up window. Yeah that's a bad sign. Yeah, but

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Speaker 1: you know, of course, Norton samantechmates makes a Norton anty

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Speaker 1: virus for Macintosh, and uh Antigo, which also does is

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Speaker 1: the the organization that finds a lot of the Mac

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Speaker 1: viruses and issues alerts. UM offers its virus barrier, and

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Speaker 1: both of them offer a dual platform version of the software.

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Speaker 1: Because some people who are using Intel based Macintosh is

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Speaker 1: are running both Windows and Macintosh operating systems on their machines. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: it's called using creating a virtual machine yep, yep, or

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Speaker 1: in dual boot boots. Um, but yeah we should. Antigo

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Speaker 1: actually said that in January that at least twenty thousand

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Speaker 1: people had downloaded that I Work O nine installer. So

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Speaker 1: that's twenty people who had their computers infected by a trojan.

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Speaker 1: And that's just the I Work and that's not including

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Speaker 1: the Photoshop one. I don't have any any figures on that.

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Speaker 1: I didn't I didn't see any fresh numbers on that.

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Speaker 1: That was actually fairly close to when we uh, when

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Speaker 1: we are recording the podcast now, so new hard numbers there,

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Speaker 1: um it is. There's also a possibility to that you

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Speaker 1: can run a foul of some malicious websites and some

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Speaker 1: of the runtime operating systems. You know, there are a

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Speaker 1: cross platform you know, if there is a virus that

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Speaker 1: operates on them, you can you could possibly have some

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Speaker 1: problems with that too. So always good to be very

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Speaker 1: conscious of what you do, no matter what operating system

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Speaker 1: you're on. Now, sad to say, if your computer has

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Speaker 1: been compromised, Let's say that you are a fine upstanding person,

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Speaker 1: but your little brother decided he wanted a copy of

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Speaker 1: I work for some reason. Perhaps he's starting a new

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Speaker 1: lemonade stand and he needs to have a spreadsheet tracking

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Speaker 1: all his sales, or a nice presentation. But of course

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Speaker 1: you know you didn't download it. Of course we would

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Speaker 1: never suggest such a thing. But let's say that your

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Speaker 1: computer gets a acted by it. You can find a

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Speaker 1: trojan removal tool supplied by Secure Mac if you if

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Speaker 1: you need that service, if if you know that your

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Speaker 1: computer has been compromised, UM, I recommend that you get

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Speaker 1: this trojan removal tool so that you can take take

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Speaker 1: care of that problem, because the longer you leave it,

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Speaker 1: the more likely your computer will be used in some

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Speaker 1: really nasty denial of service tech or spam at tech

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Speaker 1: or whatever. I mean. For all we know, the person

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Speaker 1: who is who designed this trojan did so just to

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Speaker 1: prove a point. We don't know that there was any

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Speaker 1: malicious intent, but we don't know that there's not either.

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Speaker 1: That's that's true. It's almost like that the virus I

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Speaker 1: mentioned earlier, the elk cloner, which was the very very

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Speaker 1: first thing. It was sort of a proof of concept

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Speaker 1: thing and and in in this case a practical joke

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Speaker 1: than an actual problem. But you know, you'll notice if

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Speaker 1: your computer is starting to run more slowly. UM, if

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Speaker 1: you're having trouble you know, with the general operations of

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Speaker 1: stuff just doesn't work the way it did. UM, you

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Speaker 1: might have reason to, uh, to believe that there is

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Speaker 1: a evil entity lurking within your hard drive. Right if

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Speaker 1: you look and see that there's a there are a

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Speaker 1: lot of packets going across your home network and yet

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Speaker 1: nothing is downloading at the moment, that's a good indication

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Speaker 1: something's going on. You know. My favorite, uh, my favorite

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Speaker 1: macvirus of all time has to be the the Honor

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Speaker 1: System virus UM, the one that basically went around saying, well,

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Speaker 1: you know, we're not going to write a virus for

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Speaker 1: your Macintosh. Please delete your entire hard driving. Forward this

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Speaker 1: to all your friends. Yeah, so this is a good

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Speaker 1: We we've pretty much kind of drawn the line between

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Speaker 1: hackers who might show you that it's possible to create

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Speaker 1: a virus in in order to boost security. UM. Hackers

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Speaker 1: often will do that. They'll they'll find security flaws and

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Speaker 1: they'll publicize them in the hopes that someone will address

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Speaker 1: those flaws. And fix it, whereas crackers are the kind

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Speaker 1: of hackers who will exploit it for their own you know,

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Speaker 1: means that's true. And they're all so tasty with soup

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Speaker 1: they are. That's a good that's a good stopping point.

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Speaker 1: So we're gonna wrap things up before we go. I

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Speaker 1: thought it would be nice if we gave a shout

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Speaker 1: out to a sister podcast of ours. It's brand new.

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Speaker 1: It just started publishing um February really and it's called

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Speaker 1: stuff Mom Never told you. And it's a sort of

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Speaker 1: a you know, a feminine perspective on various articles that

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Speaker 1: appear on our site. And I highly recommend it um

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Speaker 1: in a masculine way. Excellent. Yea, all right, And if

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Speaker 1: you want to learn more about computer viruses and computer

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Speaker 1: topics in general, you can check out dozens of articles

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Speaker 1: that we have live right now at how stuff works

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Speaker 1: dot com. And we'll talk to you again really soon

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Speaker 1: for more on this and thousands of other topics. Is

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Speaker 1: it how stuff works dot com, brought to you by

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Speaker 1: the reinvented two thousand twelve camera. It's ready, are you