Editorial - Macrimination 

Be Happy You're On A Mac -- But Do It Quietly

By Steve Sobek - Contributing Editor

I told myself I wasn't going to be like everyone else this week and write a "Ha! Ha! We're not being affected by the virus!" column.

But holding your emotions in isn't very good for you, either, so I decided there wouldn't be anything wrong with doing a little gloating.

I'm just not going to do it too loudly.

It's been quite a week in the world of computers -- or should I say the whole world? The SoBig virus (and yes, I've heard the "SoBig" and "SoBek" jokes already about my name) has taken the world by storm and is slowing networks and saddling consumers and enterprises alike with clogged inboxes full of messages with subjects reading "Re: details," "details" and, my personal favorite, "Thank you!"

No, thank you, Mr. (or Ms.) virus writer.

Experts say that whoever wrote the worms (there are more than one variant of this virus), could be gathering resources for a denial-of-service attack or for relaying spam. But no one really knows what it could do, as the end result of all of this infection has yet to reveal itself.

As Alfred Huger, senior director of engineering for Symantec's security response team, told TechWeb in the above referenced article, "It's entirely up to the author (of the virus). ... It can download whatever its heart desires."

But it can't on my machine.

I've been getting many of these e-mails myself. Because of my extended Web presence, I'm getting at least 100 or 200 of them a day. But I'm just deleting them and smiling, knowing that they can't dig their wormy hands into the innards of my operating system.

I got so happy about it that I wanted to send messages to all of my friends with subject lines like "Thank you!" and "Re: That movie" as a joke.

But I shouldn't get too smug, and I shouldn't joke about it.

The only reason we (Mac users) aren't having the same troubles is that most of the virus writers aren't paying attention to us.

As technology consultant Graham Cluley told columnist David Zeiler of Sunspot.net: "It's perfectly possible to write viruses for Apple Macs. ... Indeed, a Mac has no more inherent security than a PC, but virus writers appear motivated by a desire to cause widespread havoc and so have concentrated on the market leader."

I guess there are some benefits to being a fringe platform with a small marketshare, after all.

Of course this means that we can't shirk our duties and get complacent. Just like our PC pals, we should install our virus software and update it often. You don't want to be that first customer to have your drive wiped clean by the very first large-scale malicious Mac virus, do you?

But at least when that happens, we'll know we have arrived, and it will prove the switcher campaign worked, although I hardly think Apple was targeting virus-mongers when it started the campaign.

Stepping into the morass of conflicting numbers describing platform marketshare is not the purpose of this column. But if Apple's hope of gaining percentage points comes true, then we can be certain we won't be safe from this scourge forever.

And although our machines are unaffected, it doesn't mean we are. This column was late coming to press because the SoBig traffic got to be SoBad that filtering programs kept intercepting my message delivering these wonderful words to you. Indeed, we're all still affected by this mess in one way or another.

So take two doses of your antivirus medication and call me in the morning.

Steve Sobek is a journalist and Webmaster of United Mac. Reach him at ssobek@stevesobek.net.