Sophos has a blog called NakedSecurity, and posted a history of Mac malware last October. Considering the recent Flash trojan variants, and all the recent news about security issues, I found it instructive to see how attacks on the Mac (and the Apple II before it) happened and what was done to prevent problems for Mac users.
Please have a look at the post for details… here’s a list by year of the malware mentioned.
Mac malware timeline
- 1982 – Prehistory: Elk Cloner
- 1987 – nVIR
- 1988 – HyperCard
- 1990 – MDEF
- 1991 – German folk tunes
- 1995 – Word macro viruses
- 1996 – Laroux – viruses for Excel
- 1996 – AutoStart 9805 and Sevendust
- 2004 – Renepo and Amphimix
- 2006 – Leap, the first virus for Mac OS X
- 2007 – OpenOffice BadBunny and RSPlug financial malware
- 2008 – Scareware, backdoors and Jahlav
2
- 009 – Malware in pirated software torrents, sex videos and a rudimentary virus protection from Apple
- 2010 – Backdoors, cross-platform attacks and free anti-virus
- 2011 – MacDefender scareware and SEO poisoning
