Speaker 1: Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve Camray.
Speaker 1: It's ready. Are you get in touch with technology with
Speaker 1: tex Stuff from how stuff works dot com. Hello, everybody,
Speaker 1: welcome to tech stuff. My name is Chris Polette. I'm
Speaker 1: an editor here at how stuff works dot com, and today,
Speaker 1: sitting next to me, as usual, is senior writer Jonathan Strickland.
Speaker 1: Hey there, um, Today we're gonna talk about again the
Speaker 1: shady side of computing. Yes, it seems we talked about
Speaker 1: this a lot. It turns out that, well, it's more
Speaker 1: in a pretty big shady side. Well, you know, Okay,
Speaker 1: Well let's look at it this way. We can talk
Speaker 1: about the all the easy stuff and then we go, hey,
Speaker 1: everything's working normally. Well, that's got it for today. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's true. That's a pretty short So we're going to
Speaker 1: talk We talked once before about computer viruses. Actually a
Speaker 1: couple of times before we've talked about computer viruses, and
Speaker 1: today we wanted to talk about a specific pair of
Speaker 1: trojans that recently attacked a computing system that, for a
Speaker 1: very long time was seen as practically unassailable. That's true.
Speaker 1: We're talking about the Macintosh and Honestly, you might be
Speaker 1: surprised to know this, but the very very first virus
Speaker 1: was written by somebody named Rich Scranta, and he actually
Speaker 1: created this as a practical joke when he was in
Speaker 1: the ninth grade for his apple to computer lab at school.
Speaker 1: And it was just a very simple thing that every
Speaker 1: once in a while and put up a message on
Speaker 1: the when the computer would boot up saying essentially, this
Speaker 1: is a virus. I mean I could read the whole thing,
Speaker 1: but um, just kind of a novelty thing. He did
Speaker 1: it to test the theory that it could be done.
Speaker 1: And now viruses are more than twenty five years old,
Speaker 1: but they have gotten significantly more malicious. Right, Yeah, there,
Speaker 1: there there are still viruses that are just jokes, you know.
Speaker 1: There's still viruses that go around where all it is
Speaker 1: is just something that messes with you and makes you
Speaker 1: think you're going crazy because your computer is not acting right. Um,
Speaker 1: but those are you know, those are annoying, But those
Speaker 1: aren't the ones that make the news. The ones that
Speaker 1: make the news are the ones, of course, that cause
Speaker 1: billions and billions of dollars worth of damages when people
Speaker 1: and corporations, when their systems just completely crash and no
Speaker 1: one communicates with anyone else. That's true. And there are
Speaker 1: a couple of things we need to point out before
Speaker 1: you get in in deep. We need to point out
Speaker 1: that you were mentioning that we were going to discuss
Speaker 1: two trojans, and we should point out the difference in
Speaker 1: a trojan and a virus. I think um the virus
Speaker 1: is a self replicating program. Um it um basically will copy.
Speaker 1: For example, it will copy information from your address book.
Speaker 1: It will send itself to other people in your email
Speaker 1: message saying hey, you need to open this file. It's urgent.
Speaker 1: And when you do, you load it into your computer,
Speaker 1: which then you know, propagates and continues to do. A
Speaker 1: trojan doesn't replicate by itself. UM. It's something that maybe
Speaker 1: somebody would say, do you have any viruses on your computer?
Speaker 1: Download this and find out now, And you download it
Speaker 1: and you install it, and lo and behold. It's not
Speaker 1: a virus protection program. It is, in need, a trojan horse,
Speaker 1: and it gets in and messages with your computer. Both
Speaker 1: are kinds of malware which you know mouth being bad,
Speaker 1: dangerous software. And of course it's called a trojan after
Speaker 1: the trojan horse, which you know, we all have heard
Speaker 1: of it. You know, lots of soldiers hidd inside the
Speaker 1: trojan horse. It was pulled into Troy. They all popped
Speaker 1: out and then they started causing a ruckus as soldiers
Speaker 1: are want to do. Now, the trojans on your computer,
Speaker 1: same sort of thing. Hopefully they're not on your computer,
Speaker 1: but the trojans that could be on your computer, same
Speaker 1: sort of thing. It's a packet that has inside it
Speaker 1: something nasty, and it can be a virus. So a
Speaker 1: trojan can deliver a virus which could then self replicate,
Speaker 1: or it could be something else. And one of the
Speaker 1: more prevalent trojan attacks, or at least one of the
Speaker 1: ones that gets the most news, are the kind that's
Speaker 1: set up butt nets, and these are programs the trojans.
Speaker 1: These trojans carry programs that give a remote user access
Speaker 1: to the core of your work computer. So suddenly someone
Speaker 1: somewhere else, possibly on the other side of the world,
Speaker 1: can make your computer do things. And if they're clever enough,
Speaker 1: they can make them do things. Make your computer do things,
Speaker 1: and you don't. You're not even aware that your computer
Speaker 1: is acting abnormally. Well, if you were, then they could
Speaker 1: do something about it, or at least stop it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: at least turn your computer off if nothing else. But
Speaker 1: but yeah, if IF they're clever. And the reason why
Speaker 1: I say if is a lot of these programs tend
Speaker 1: to be propagated by people who themselves are not great programmers.
Speaker 1: They tend to grab script from other websites and use them,
Speaker 1: and they're called script kiddies. Um, but let's get to
Speaker 1: the specifics of the Mac trojans that we wanted to
Speaker 1: talk about now. For a very long time, MAX have
Speaker 1: been seen as sort of, uh, much more safe than PCs, right,
Speaker 1: They're they're seen as you know, people are very proud.
Speaker 1: They'll say, I don't have to worry about viruses. I
Speaker 1: use a Mac. That's true. Um, this is a principle,
Speaker 1: which is it has a at least a rhyming name.
Speaker 1: Security through obscurity. Basically, why bother writing viruses for the
Speaker 1: Mac crowd, because they're only ten or so of them
Speaker 1: out there, right, so they don't even bother. And and
Speaker 1: on top of that, the Mac operating system and on
Speaker 1: hardware is a closed system. It's not like PCs where
Speaker 1: you can you know, you can get a circuit board
Speaker 1: from one place and you can get memory from another place.
Speaker 1: Max are an all in one package that you get
Speaker 1: from Apple, and you can upgrade and everything. But for
Speaker 1: the most part, it's a closed system. So again, security
Speaker 1: through obscurity. It's not something that is widely understood. Not
Speaker 1: people don't don't sit there and do a lot of
Speaker 1: Mac hacks. I mean there are people who do them,
Speaker 1: but there are fewer than the PC hacks. That's true.
Speaker 1: That's true. Um. And for a long time that that
Speaker 1: people in the Mac crowd of sort of speaking as
Speaker 1: someone who is a Mac user more often than not. Um,
Speaker 1: you know, we're sort of under that mindset. We're saying, hey,
Speaker 1: I don't really need to spend seventy five dollars on
Speaker 1: a piece of antivirus software because my computer is safe. Um.
Speaker 1: And Apple explains that, you know, they think that their
Speaker 1: system is safe. They're not really particularly concerned about it,
Speaker 1: except not too long ago. A few months ago, they
Speaker 1: actually had a page up on their website and everybody
Speaker 1: took notice of the fact that they were saying, well,
Speaker 1: maybe you should install some antivirus software. Probably wouldn't be
Speaker 1: a bad idea, and that which kind of deviates from there. Well,
Speaker 1: the OS ten operating system is a very secure system.
Speaker 1: You don't really need to worry about viruses. It's a
Speaker 1: selling point, it's a marketing point for them to UH
Speaker 1: to say how secure it is, right, And I think
Speaker 1: this is sort of the price of popularity UM. Mac
Speaker 1: sales UH increased significantly over two thousand and eight before
Speaker 1: the economic downturn, which affected all computer sales. But they're
Speaker 1: up to a of market share now, right, so, and
Speaker 1: that's significant. So now that there are more Mac users
Speaker 1: out there, there's more of an incentive for someone who
Speaker 1: wants to create malware to create it for the Mac
Speaker 1: because now they have a significant population they can affect. Now,
Speaker 1: before if you were like, well, if people have PCs
Speaker 1: and one person has a Mac, it makes more sense
Speaker 1: for me to program something for the ninety people because
Speaker 1: I'm gonna get more hits that way. But if the
Speaker 1: population of computer users gets high enough, then it totally
Speaker 1: makes sense. Okay, well I'm gonna switch gears because these
Speaker 1: people not only are there more of them, but they
Speaker 1: have been lulled into a false sense of security and
Speaker 1: I can take advantage of that. That's true now. The
Speaker 1: the Trojans that hit in January of two thousand nine
Speaker 1: that affect max effect a very specific subset of Mac users,
Speaker 1: and I like to call them the naughty ones. So,
Speaker 1: in other words, right now, if using a Mac is
Speaker 1: still very safe, I should I'm gonna go out and
Speaker 1: say it right now, using a Mac. If you're using
Speaker 1: a Mac and you're being a law abiding, um, you know,
Speaker 1: upstanding citizen on the web, then you're going to be
Speaker 1: pretty safe using a Mac. But if you're a filthy, dirty,
Speaker 1: pirate yar and you're trying to steal software from the Mac,
Speaker 1: you might be in for a nasty surprise. That's true.
Speaker 1: Um and all started with a suite of software that
Speaker 1: those of you who are not Mac users may not
Speaker 1: be familiar with. It's called I Work. Um, it's a collection,
Speaker 1: it's it's not really a A and Microsoft Office killer.
Speaker 1: But there are three applications that are part of the suite.
Speaker 1: Pages which is a you know, word processing program, Keynote,
Speaker 1: which is a presentation program, and Numbers, which is a
Speaker 1: spreadsheet program. And uh, oddly enough, these are very much
Speaker 1: like three of the major applications in Office. But um,
Speaker 1: there was a pirate ID version going around, a broken
Speaker 1: version that people were starting to download, and uh, it
Speaker 1: contained more than just a copy of I work, it
Speaker 1: also contained a trojan horse and so this was propagated
Speaker 1: along or spread along bit torrent. So people using bit
Speaker 1: torrent to download a pirated copy of I work um
Speaker 1: received a trojan that installed as part of the eye
Speaker 1: work Services installation process. And um it gave someone no
Speaker 1: one's really sure who at this point, as when we're
Speaker 1: recording this root access to the victimized computer. And that's
Speaker 1: that's a bad thing. That's what you can build a
Speaker 1: bot net or a zombie computer army out of are
Speaker 1: these computers that have a compromised root access system. It
Speaker 1: means that someone else can then sort of fiddle with
Speaker 1: your computer and make it do things like UM distributed
Speaker 1: denial of service attacks or spreading spam, that kind of thing.
Speaker 1: That's sort of what most zombie computer armies are are
Speaker 1: used for. Yeah, the name of this one actually is
Speaker 1: OS ten dot Trojan dot ice services dot A catchy Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: well they all are. They have these fancy names. And
Speaker 1: it also depends on which, uh, which anti virus authority
Speaker 1: you're talking to, because at least on the PC side,
Speaker 1: usually each one has its own name for the each
Speaker 1: virus that is even more confusing. But in this case, yes,
Speaker 1: yep and uh, it's known to bury parts of itself
Speaker 1: very deep in the system. UM. As a matter of fact,
Speaker 1: the experts say that if you've got this on there
Speaker 1: on your machine, it's probably best to do a clean
Speaker 1: installation of your operating system and just format your hard
Speaker 1: drive again again. Back up your computer, right. It's always important.
Speaker 1: We say it over and over, and you think we're joking.
Speaker 1: We're not joking. Not that I do it myself. I'm
Speaker 1: guilty of not doing I have been known to go
Speaker 1: a long time between backups, and it has in the past.
Speaker 1: I've I've become legendary in the office for having some
Speaker 1: hissy fits when I've had problems with my computer. Yep, yep,
Speaker 1: manly hissy fits. I should add, if you say so, okay, um,
Speaker 1: And then you know that this happened, uh, I guess
Speaker 1: technically it was late two thousand eight when it started
Speaker 1: to show up, but you know, it was the holiday,
Speaker 1: so we waited to be worried about it until the
Speaker 1: new year, and the whole the whole eye work O
Speaker 1: nine didn't even really come out until UM Macworld that's true,
Speaker 1: but which was immediately after writing year, so yeah, exactly. Um,
Speaker 1: but there was a variant that showed up not too
Speaker 1: long afterward. I just call it B. Just call it B. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Well it's the blah blah blah blah blah blah blah
Speaker 1: B instead of A. Okay, I mean, I don't have
Speaker 1: it written down in front. Un Lets you get away
Speaker 1: with that as you're you're right. So this is a
Speaker 1: second trojan, very similar to the first one. Um, but
Speaker 1: this one was attached to pirated versions of Adobe Photoshop
Speaker 1: c S four for Apple, So again an illegal uh
Speaker 1: application and pirated application. It's is the one that's carrying
Speaker 1: this trojan. And if you went out and you bought
Speaker 1: a copy of Adobe Photoshop c S four, you're fine.
Speaker 1: I mean, that's that's a legitimate copy. It's not carrying
Speaker 1: anything dangerous. It's only for the people who are saying, hey,
Speaker 1: I want this, but I don't want to shell out
Speaker 1: the you know, several hundred dollars it's gonna cost me
Speaker 1: to buy this program, so I'm just gonna steal it. Well,
Speaker 1: they're the ones who are paying the price right now,
Speaker 1: because they're the ones who had their computers infected. So, uh,
Speaker 1: if you were a a Mac user, the first and
Speaker 1: most important thing you should know about all this is
Speaker 1: you're not completely immune from viruses. There's there, you know,
Speaker 1: no operating system. Even an Apple spokesperson said this, no
Speaker 1: operating system is a hundred percent safe. There there's always
Speaker 1: some vulnerability. And you know, of course, the manufacturers, the
Speaker 1: software manufacturers. Microsoft is famous for patching on regular intervals
Speaker 1: UM and Apple does sends out intervals patches to UM.
Speaker 1: The thing is, you know, you need to be aware
Speaker 1: that it can happen. And investing in any virus software
Speaker 1: isn't really a bad idea. Yeah, it's expensive and there's
Speaker 1: not a lot of free anty virus software. UM I
Speaker 1: would be wary, especially of downloading anything that has a
Speaker 1: pop up window. Yeah that's a bad sign. Yeah, but
Speaker 1: you know, of course, Norton samantechmates makes a Norton anty
Speaker 1: virus for Macintosh, and uh Antigo, which also does is
Speaker 1: the the organization that finds a lot of the Mac
Speaker 1: viruses and issues alerts. UM offers its virus barrier, and
Speaker 1: both of them offer a dual platform version of the software.
Speaker 1: Because some people who are using Intel based Macintosh is
Speaker 1: are running both Windows and Macintosh operating systems on their machines. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's called using creating a virtual machine yep, yep, or
Speaker 1: in dual boot boots. Um, but yeah we should. Antigo
Speaker 1: actually said that in January that at least twenty thousand
Speaker 1: people had downloaded that I Work O nine installer. So
Speaker 1: that's twenty people who had their computers infected by a trojan.
Speaker 1: And that's just the I Work and that's not including
Speaker 1: the Photoshop one. I don't have any any figures on that.
Speaker 1: I didn't I didn't see any fresh numbers on that.
Speaker 1: That was actually fairly close to when we uh, when
Speaker 1: we are recording the podcast now, so new hard numbers there,
Speaker 1: um it is. There's also a possibility to that you
Speaker 1: can run a foul of some malicious websites and some
Speaker 1: of the runtime operating systems. You know, there are a
Speaker 1: cross platform you know, if there is a virus that
Speaker 1: operates on them, you can you could possibly have some
Speaker 1: problems with that too. So always good to be very
Speaker 1: conscious of what you do, no matter what operating system
Speaker 1: you're on. Now, sad to say, if your computer has
Speaker 1: been compromised, Let's say that you are a fine upstanding person,
Speaker 1: but your little brother decided he wanted a copy of
Speaker 1: I work for some reason. Perhaps he's starting a new
Speaker 1: lemonade stand and he needs to have a spreadsheet tracking
Speaker 1: all his sales, or a nice presentation. But of course
Speaker 1: you know you didn't download it. Of course we would
Speaker 1: never suggest such a thing. But let's say that your
Speaker 1: computer gets a acted by it. You can find a
Speaker 1: trojan removal tool supplied by Secure Mac if you if
Speaker 1: you need that service, if if you know that your
Speaker 1: computer has been compromised, UM, I recommend that you get
Speaker 1: this trojan removal tool so that you can take take
Speaker 1: care of that problem, because the longer you leave it,
Speaker 1: the more likely your computer will be used in some
Speaker 1: really nasty denial of service tech or spam at tech
Speaker 1: or whatever. I mean. For all we know, the person
Speaker 1: who is who designed this trojan did so just to
Speaker 1: prove a point. We don't know that there was any
Speaker 1: malicious intent, but we don't know that there's not either.
Speaker 1: That's that's true. It's almost like that the virus I
Speaker 1: mentioned earlier, the elk cloner, which was the very very
Speaker 1: first thing. It was sort of a proof of concept
Speaker 1: thing and and in in this case a practical joke
Speaker 1: than an actual problem. But you know, you'll notice if
Speaker 1: your computer is starting to run more slowly. UM, if
Speaker 1: you're having trouble you know, with the general operations of
Speaker 1: stuff just doesn't work the way it did. UM, you
Speaker 1: might have reason to, uh, to believe that there is
Speaker 1: a evil entity lurking within your hard drive. Right if
Speaker 1: you look and see that there's a there are a
Speaker 1: lot of packets going across your home network and yet
Speaker 1: nothing is downloading at the moment, that's a good indication
Speaker 1: something's going on. You know. My favorite, uh, my favorite
Speaker 1: macvirus of all time has to be the the Honor
Speaker 1: System virus UM, the one that basically went around saying, well,
Speaker 1: you know, we're not going to write a virus for
Speaker 1: your Macintosh. Please delete your entire hard driving. Forward this
Speaker 1: to all your friends. Yeah, so this is a good
Speaker 1: We we've pretty much kind of drawn the line between
Speaker 1: hackers who might show you that it's possible to create
Speaker 1: a virus in in order to boost security. UM. Hackers
Speaker 1: often will do that. They'll they'll find security flaws and
Speaker 1: they'll publicize them in the hopes that someone will address
Speaker 1: those flaws. And fix it, whereas crackers are the kind
Speaker 1: of hackers who will exploit it for their own you know,
Speaker 1: means that's true. And they're all so tasty with soup
Speaker 1: they are. That's a good that's a good stopping point.
Speaker 1: So we're gonna wrap things up before we go. I
Speaker 1: thought it would be nice if we gave a shout
Speaker 1: out to a sister podcast of ours. It's brand new.
Speaker 1: It just started publishing um February really and it's called
Speaker 1: stuff Mom Never told you. And it's a sort of
Speaker 1: a you know, a feminine perspective on various articles that
Speaker 1: appear on our site. And I highly recommend it um
Speaker 1: in a masculine way. Excellent. Yea, all right, And if
Speaker 1: you want to learn more about computer viruses and computer
Speaker 1: topics in general, you can check out dozens of articles
Speaker 1: that we have live right now at how stuff works
Speaker 1: dot com. And we'll talk to you again really soon
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