Posted by Virus Bulletin on Mar 30, 2005
Offer of $25,000 reward for OS X virus is withdrawn - for legal reasons
A competition offering a $25,000 reward to the first person to successfully infect two Apple G5 PowerMacs with an OS X virus has been cancelled due to legal reasons and complaints from Mac users.
DVForge, a company specialising in Apple accessories, says it launched the competition 'To lay to rest, once and for all, the myths surrounding the lack of spreading computer virii [sic] on the Macintosh OS X operating system, by sponsoring a contest that challenges virus writers to actually prove that they can introduce a harmless virus into two modern OS X Macs.'
The idea of the contest was dreamt up by the DVForge marketing team in response to comments by AV firm Symantec which suggested that users of OS X are likely to experience an increasing risk of virus attack as Apple's share in the computer market grows.
However, the accessory firm began receiving complaints about the contest just hours after it had been announced and, thanks to the large number of complaints from irate Mac users and a realisation that the firm could land itself in serious hot water if it continued with the contest, the competition was cancelled.
DVForge, Inc. CEO Jack Campbell said: 'I have been convinced that there may be legality issues stemming from such a contest, beyond those determined by our own legal counsel, prior to announcing the contest. So, despite my personal distaste for what some companies have done to take advantage of virus fears among the Mac community, and my own inclination to make a bold statement in response to those fears, I have no responsible choice but to retract the contest, effective immediately.'
The responsible choice, of course, would have been not to launch a contest in the first place.
In June 2001, security firm GateKeeper was slammed by the AV industry for holding two challenges to break the defences of its E-mail GateKeeper software. It took 11 days for the $10,000 prize to be claimed by a pair of programmers whose malicious code circumvented the firm's AV protection and reached the desktop.
Posted on 30 March 2005 by Virus Bulletin
