>But you're ignoring the fact that a user has to initially run
>it THEMSELVES before it can start any of that...thus the
>arguement can be made that it is NOT self-replicating; it
>needs a user's help to replicate.

Well all viruses require some level of user interaction. I can have a boatlaod of infected email attachments on my windows machine. If I don't click anything nothing happens. Even if there were a virus that was truly "self replicating"...well I still have to turn on the computer.

The interaction between the virus and the user has nothing to do with it. It's about the interaction between the virus and the files on the computer. The virus is inserting itself into other programs. The user isn't decompiling programs and then altering the code.

>At least
>OSX prompts you for an administrator's password before any
>damage is done; you have to conciously OK the file a number of
>times before it goes to work.

But see, that's where mac users miss it. Social engineering makes all that pointless. That's how Window users' computers are infected. I get junk mail that I know have infected attachments DAILY. I can't remmeber the last time I got infected by a virus...McAfee has nothing to do with it.

If I'm trying to get your computer infected, I'm going to package it so that you WANT to go through all the authentication steps. All those mac users on that Mac rumor site wanted so badly to see the next version of OS X that they gladly went through all that. They could include a retina scanner on all Macintosh computers...still wouldn't have prevented this...Observe:

"Oh wow, this member should be banned. I downloaded the file and it comes up as a picture file then when I click on it it pops open Terminal and runs something. Looks like someone attempted to make a Mac virus...

Reported."

"lol, i downloaded it and ran it. Now if this was a pc, i would have already reformatted and reinstalled it. But since im on a mac right now im just like WTF. has anyone been able to find out what it does exactly. Probably not somthing harmful since you would have had to enter your password.
Edit: whats even funnier is that i was 'lucky' enough to download the file before it was changed by a mod. That person should be banned, even though he is less than likely to comeback."

^^^^This guy is a real genius. If the file had been more dangerous, they would be reformatting as well. lol.

I removed the link just in case the file was still there. Don't want any of you mac users hosing your machines.