A virus on Mac - really through MS Word???

Question

A virus on Mac - really through MS Word???

In the ten years or so I have been using macs, from system 7 to system 10.4, I have never had a virus problem - until now! I seem to have caught a virus through an MS Word file that I acquired on a CD rom from a piece of software -
so it's really an MSWord virus (as opposed to a mac virus) but it's giving me a hard time just the same.

here is the info I have:

Anti-virus software caught a macro virus Claud.A:

Description:
A simple, class-infector macro virus for Word 97 and later which has no payloads.
Word97Macro/Claud.A is a simple macro virus intent only on replicating. It has a single event handler that runs when infected documents are closed and, once the Word environment is infected, when any files are closed. Document_close disables the "Macro" item on the "Tools" menu.

can anyone make a suggestion? what do I do?

powerMac G5 single processor, Mac OS X (10.4)

Posted on Sep 8, 2006 9:19 PM

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Answer 1

Sep 9, 2006 1:29 AM in response to Will Friedwald, F.A.D.

Word (and Excel) macro virus have been around for a very long time on the Mac (we get them by exchanging files with Windows users). The Word macro virus usually gets installed on the normal template and we usually can get rid of them by trashing that file (it should be located in /Users/yourusername/Documents/Microsoft User Data/). As a precaution I always have the macros disabled in Word.

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Answer 2

Sep 9, 2006 4:52 PM in response to Will Friedwald, F.A.D.

Delete the infected file and report the incident to the distributor of that CD.

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Answer 3

Sep 9, 2006 4:58 PM in response to Will Friedwald, F.A.D.

If you MUST use that file, you can copy and paste the contents into another (non-Microsoft) word processor (TextEdit is good). Then, once you've eradicated the virus from Microsoft Word (usually by deleting the offending file, turning back ON "macro virus protection" in the preferences, and deleting the "Normal" template) you can re-paste the text into a fresh Word document. Or just use Apple's Pages program 😉 Hope this helps. -Jonathan

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Answer 4

Sep 10, 2006 1:52 AM in response to Stanley Horwitz

Usually, deleting the infected file is not enough because these virus install themselves in the normal template and from there infect any new document the user creates.

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Answer 5

Dr. Smoke

Level 9

56,586 points

Sep 10, 2006 2:30 AM in response to Will Friedwald, F.A.D.

Hi, Will.

What antivirus software are you using? Does it offer a repair option? If not, consider Symantec Norton AntiVirus for Mac version 10 (the Tiger-compatible version). NAV 10 can not only eradicated the virus but often repair infected files if you've enabled its repair preference.

It's one of the antivirus solutions I recommend in my "Detecting and avoiding malware and spyware" FAQ and the one I use.

Good luck!

😉 Dr. Smoke
Author: Troubleshooting Mac® OS X

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Answer 6

hyphen

Level 6

15,505 points

Sep 10, 2006 2:55 AM in response to Will Friedwald, F.A.D.

Hi Will

Not much to add. Just a bit of history: macro viri have existed long before OS X for both the mac and windows platforms. Due to the way macros work they are cross platform, i.e. the same code can infect both windows and mac installations of Microsoft Office. Bear in mind that they only infect Office installations and documents. As for clearing them I can't beat the advice of the other guys in this thread.

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Answer 7

Sep 10, 2006 4:07 AM in response to Joaquim Lopes

Good point. I was assuming the OP had enough sense not to open the document, but that assumption might not be accurate.

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Answer 8

Sep 10, 2006 6:23 AM in response to Will Friedwald, F.A.D.

Hi Will Friedwald, F.A.D;

I found a really easy solution to M$ marco virus. I don't have anything at all from M$ on my Mac. Haven't missed any of their software since I deleted it all one bit.

Allan

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