Worm that targets OS X, Linux, Windows raises questions about relative safety of operating systems
Are Linux and Mac OS X becoming too popular for their own good?
Security company Symantec said Monday that a new worm is attacking the operating systems, along with Microsoft’s Windows, in what may be the first time this sort of malicious software has been designed to target all three OSes.
It’s no surprise that Windows is in the crosshairs, but Linux and OS X have been championed by fans in part because of their seeming invulnerability to Internet attacks. Yet analysts say their increasing popularity—recent reports show both making revenue gains—may have landed them on the hit list.
“With both gathering steam, they present tempting bait for online attackers,” said Endpoint Technologies founder Roger Kay.
Called Badbunny, the worm is “distributed within malicious OpenOffice documents,” according to Symantec’s security response site. The worm—which infects users’ systems if they open an OpenOffice Draw file called badbunny.odg—does different things depending on which OS the user is running. Ultimately, though, it displays a photo of a scantily clad woman with a man dressed in a bunny suit.L33tdawg: OS X is definitely going to become a prime target for exploit writers - it's becoming increasingly difficult to find bugs on Windows and hackers are always looking for a new stomping ground. As I've said before; it's only a matter of time...
