Wired Magazine reported yesterday that the first Macintosh OSX worm had been spotted. Don’t worry it wasn’t a fairly bad worm, but a worm nonetheless. You have to accept it from an iChat file transfer. Our Dallas IT support clients should notify us if they see the worm immediately. Here is what it looks like:

Symantec indicated:

The worm makes use of the Spotlight search program, included in OSX, and will run each time the machine boots. It identifies any applications being started, and if iChat begins to run, the worm uses iChat to send the infected file – latestpics.tgz – to all contacts on the infected user’s buddy list. Those on the buddy list will then be asked to accept the file. If they do, the file will subsequently be saved to their hard drive. Files infected by OSX.Leap.A may be corrupted and may not run correctly.