Back in 2005, the British-based art collective Troika built a harmless virus in an attempt to get back to “the golden era” of hacking, when viruses were supposedly meant only to bewilder and amuse.
Named the Newton Virus, it is transferred to the victim’s Mac through USB drive, where it activates on a one time basis at random and causes the entire desktop (including menu bar) to “collapse” into a pile of icon rubble. Using the MacBook and MacBook Pro’s sudden motion sensor (à la the MacSaber), the virus causes the desktop pieces to tumble around realistically when the computer is tilted, leaving the hapless user indeed bewildered and maybe not-so-amused. No data is damaged, and the virus doesn’t replicate or spread itself in any other way.
A video has been posted showcasing the virus, and is also part of the Design and the Elastic Mind show currently running at MoMA in NY.
[Via gizmodo]
I really wish they made that available for public download.
I desperately want this for my wife's MacBook. She might kill me but it would be worth it.
Sorry that's all great and everything, but it's not a virus. It doesn't replicate or attempt to spread, it's simply a cute program that runs at a random time.
Automatically copies itself to your hard drive?
Does this program have to be installed?
In that case is the Mac vulnerable to anything inserted into the USB drive?
It's not clear that this is actually a "virus". There used to be a great collection of April Fools jokes which melted the screen, turned off the monitor, put up random messages, the Talking Moose, kilroy, etc. This seems more like one of those.
It does seem to auto-run when the USB fob is inserted into the USB port, but otherwise doesn't seem very virus-like.
I think these kinds of things are a bad idea for two reasons. First, they demonstrate a method which could be used for an actual exploit. Some real exploits have been created based on code from innocent examples.
Second, malware which is operating properly doesn't impact the machine much, until the payload. Bugs in the malware can call attention to itself by consuming processor, disk space, crashing other programs, etc. This collateral damage is sometimes worse than the actual payload (which could be a practical joke like in this code).