Detection of malware reveals that Mac viruses are a genuine threat

Are they saying that Microsoft (Windows) Media Player runs on Mac OS-X???? I've got Flip4Mac, but that's not Media Player. WTF?

I've been waiting for someone to tweak to that sentence. There actually IS a version of MS Media Player for Mac but I have not seen it for years. Microsoft stopped supporting revisions to their WMP file type in it after version 8 and it became less and less relevant. Then Microsoft bought Flip4Mac and it became the default method of playing WMP files on Macs (still no support for MS's proprietary DRM, though), and the MS Media Player for Mac download site disappeared from MS website offerings. Frankly, I don't think I've seen a Mac with WMP on it for at least five years. . . and WMP would not have even have been a Universal PowerPC/Intel capable app. It would not even run on an Intel processor Mac.

That should tell you how RARE this exploit is. I've never heard of it... I think it's another proof of concept Trojan that these bozos have found in their labs OR it's a Windows malware. I note that the name of the malware (Mal/ASDFLdr-A) is generic—it doesn't follow the platform specific protocol required if it truly is an OSX specific bug—which leads me to suspect they are saying that their software has merely detected a malicious payload in a Trojanized data file that the Mac user has unwarily downloaded that will, if played on a Windows computer with WMP, redirect to a malicious website and download malware. Left unsaid is the fact this Trojanized data file detected by their software is only dangerous on a Windows computer and the Mac it was detected on is impervious to it's payload and will ignore the malicious attack.

I can see no reason a Mac user would pass on an empty music or video file to a Windows user, so even the "protecting your PC using friends" excuse for employing this AV is lame for this particular malware.

> I've been waiting for someone to tweak to that sentence.

Dayglored to the rescue!

Your explanation makes sense. I had a vague >6-yr-old recollection of WMP being spun for the Mac, but Microsoft quite clearly stopped all work on it long ago.

My guess is that this malware exploited some ancient hole in WMP, and since WMP had at once time been available for the Mac, the bald-faced liars at Sophos claimed it was a current Mac virus. What a load of crap.

BTW, here's what Wikipedia says about the Mac OS-X release of WMP:

Version 9 was the final version of Windows Media Player to be released for Mac OS X before development was cancelled by Microsoft. Developed by the Windows Media team at Microsoft instead of the Macintosh Business Unit and released in 2003, on release the application lacked many basic features that were found in other media players such as Apple's iTunes and QuickTime.[citation needed] It also lacked support for many media formats that version 9 of the Windows counterpart supported on release 10 months earlier.
The Mac version supported only Windows Media encoded media (up to version 9) enclosed in the ASF format, lacking support for all other formats such as MP4, MPEG, and Microsoft's own AVI format. On the user interface front, it did not prevent screensavers from running during playback, it did not support file drag-and-drop, nor did it support playlists. While Windows Media Player 9 had added support for some files that use the WMV9 codec (also known as the WMV3 codec by the FourCC), in other aspects it was seen as having degraded in features from previous versions.
On January 12, 2006 Microsoft announced it had ceased development of Windows Media Player for Mac.[20] Microsoft now distributes a third-party plugin called WMV Player (produced and maintained by Flip4Mac) which allows some forms of Windows Media to be played within Apple's QuickTime player and other QuickTime-aware applications.[21]

It's dead, Jim. Long dead.

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