“A new mass-mailing virus called Wallon, which wipes out Windows Media Player and is activated when a user tries to play MP3 or video files from an infected PC, was discovered in Europe on Tuesday,” Munir Kotadia reports for CNET News. “Maikel Albrecht, a product manager at Finnish security company F-Secure, said that because of recent virus outbreaks, users are less willing to open e-mail attachments, which is why Wallon’s author is counting on users clicking on an e-mail link instead. ‘The link in the e-mail points to the actual virus, so if you click the link, you download the virus,’ Albrecht said.”
Kotadia reports, “…Once the PC is infected, Wallon remains dormant until the user tries to run a media file such as an MP3 or a video. If the system uses Windows Media Player by default, the virus is activated and attempts to send HTML e-mails, each with a link to the virus file, to the addresses in the computer’s e-mail address book. ‘If you try and play media content, the worm will activate and start spreading, but the user will not see the media player,’ Albrecht said… unlike common viruses, Wallon is destructive because it replaces the wmplayer.exe file, which means that users infected by the worm will need to reinstall Media Player.”
Full article here.
MacDailyNews Note: The Wallon virus is an executable (.exe) file that does not affect Macintosh computers with Windows Media Player installed. It wouldn’t really matter if it did affect Macs, because Windows Media Player for Mac would work about as well as it does now even if it were wiped out by Wallon 
I know I shouldn’t be, but I’m still amazed at how easy it is the fuck with Windows. It’s mind boggling how horribly insecure it is.
M a c i n t o s h U n a f f e c t e d ! ! !
Says it all…
Hey Joe Mc,
You are always harping on the cost of the entry level Mac, the need for a “headless iMac”, the need for a $500 machine. So how much does the virus world cost you, directly/indirectly/aesthetically? Would it be as little as, say, $100 per year? Or more?
Me, I’d rather buy an entry level iMac with none of those problems, plus the added benefit of running the smoothest OS on the planet, rather than getting a cheap Gateway or (gasp) Dell machine, having to run any flavor of Windows, and putting up with virii/worms/real trojans.
Cost of doing business?
I wouldn’t want to gloat over the crap being flung at Windows. I’m just glad I don’t run Windows.
Who wanna bet that journalists/analysts will say that the Office 2004 Trojan Horse downloaded from Gnutella network is more serious than this virus (or that the trojan horse gets more attention than this virus)?
The article said that Wallon was destructive. I don’t know if I agree to that. How many PC users will be saved from using WMP? Shouldn’t that be a helpful virus?
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Wait, this virus wipes out Windows Media Player? That’s not a virus – that’s a public service!
Windows Media Player removed from Windows .. who was these genius people that figured out how to remove windows media player from Windows XP. I am almost willing to install this on a work computer so I can finally be rid of windows media player.
I have to give this virus a two thumbs up.
I got the latest WMP 9 for Mac (dont ask me why I dont know) & 3/4 of the time media files from Win machines comes up as needing newer player. It says my player is too old. What complete garbage typical Windows. Going to get rid of it because its useless.
Well, if this virus gets rid of Windows media player, quick, someone send the link to the European Union before Microsoft manages to convince the antitrust people that media player cannot be removed from windows.
Wait, this virus wipes out Windows Media Player? That’s not a virus – that’s a public service!
aahaha
great post!
Sara: If you have a need to play WMP content files, check out MPlayer OS X, you can find a copy of it on VersionTracker (http://www.versiontracker.com).
VLC also works, but I like MPlayer better, seems to run smoother. Note also, MPlayer can handle some mpg files that choke quicktime.
The difference between PC viruses and the lone Mac OS X trojan, is that you have to be duped into launching the trojan.
Sting a Mac user and 9 times out of 10 they will modify their behavior to avoid a repeat.
On PC’s, viruses just come walking right in anytime they feel like it, but Windows users keep returning to use Microsoft year after year.
What does that tell you?
I’m sick of these viruses only being reported on sites like these. It’s about time large websites like the BBC covered them all the time, instead of reporting that Apple only managed to sell 70 million instead of 100 million. That’s not news, what is news is people are continually sold a faulty product (Windows) that fails more times than it works.
It’s about time news site got some perspective and realised that faulty iPod Mini’s are not big news cause they can be easily fixed or replaced. Microsoft continually blames others for it’s inability to design a secure OS. What good is jailing that German lad gonna do? Nothing. How can an 18 year old bring down millions of computers and get the blame? Surely the blame must lie at the feet of Microsoft who release shoddy, bug ridden software.
so the mac virus company Origami or whatever (ugh.. what a puny market huh?) writes a virus to irritate mac users into buying their programs..
now they’ve written one against windows?
uhuh
Love the public service. This is just like viruses going after viruses.
Was talking with my sisters husband on mothers day. Had to take his PC to the shop for the third time in 12 months. Virus and other problems. Cost him $200 for the shop to do a clean OS install. That�s now $600 he has spent in 12 months. His Wife is a click-oholic.
Asked him what he uses his PC for. �Internet, email and simple word processing. Showed him my iMac and he was sold. Getting the new eMac this week. Offered to give me his Dell PC. No Thanks�
Hi Jimbo, as I have said many times before, so far virii have cost me nothing. I run the free version of whatever virus checker comes with the motherboards I buy, or use AVG, which if free. Also we network with a linsys router here, which has zonealarm integrated into it, or I install zonealarm in individual computers I build for others.
So, extra cost? Cash, none, and time…….well about as much as it takes to answer you.
You would rather buy an emac, I would rather wait until Steve smells the coffee.
Wow Joe your so witty finding all of the free stuff that you have to run to make you PC work. Also how is you system resources or are witty enough to put over 1gb of ram in your computer so that you can actually run a program of your choice.
rlhamon, what are you talking about? 512 ram here and at this point have open:
2 separate qchart applications;
order entry software;
mail;
kazaa;
folding@home;
3 browsers;
office;
mem usage now 431540, and this box has been on since monday morning.
Please try harder to find some “wit” yourself.
Just fired up the tv card (you have one don’t you? They are all of forty bucks) and mem use shot up to 466558. Should I be looking for smoke rlhamon?
are you perhaps confused and thinking of kernel panic?
http://www.macosx.com/forums/search.php?searchid=115240
Seems to happen a lot. Of course most of these people have made some egregious error, like trying to use ram that costs less than gold.
Macs Unaffected? Hell, we need this for Macs, all three of them that still haven’t deleted the windows media occasional player.
Wow, Joe, you’re so cool. Gosh, I wish I could be more like you.
Please keep us up to date with hourly postings of your memory usage. Thanks.
Can’t take it can ya Abomb.
It’s just too much for me!!