The party's over, but the fun is just beginning! Have you ever thought about how boring it must be to be a Mac virus specialist? Every day you see your Wintel counterparts scurrying hither and thither desperately fighting a dozen raging viral fires simultaneously, risking life and limb to secure people's data. When witnessing their incessant acts of courage, men gasp, women swoon, and little kids say "forget all this firefighter stuff-- I'm going to be a Windows virus expert when I grow up!" Meanwhile, the Mac virus guys are sitting around watching dust motes whirling gently in sunbeams and counting ticks from the clock on the wall, all while waiting for that red crisis phone to ring. Which it hasn't done in, well, just about forever, it seems. In other words, "Mac virus watchdog" ranks right up there on the not-much-to-do scale with "Maytag repairman."

Well, wake up, people, 'cause that hotline's finally a-ringin'! Faithful viewer Roberta De Gregorio was first to inform us that, after three whole years on the market (not counting the Public Beta), Mac OS X has finally contracted its first virus. Well, not really a virus, technically speaking, but close enough; the Maytag repairmen over at Intego have described a new Mac OS X Trojan called MP3Concept, which exploits a no-no in Mac OS X that could be used by naughty people to "delete all of a user's personal files," "send an email message containing a copy of itself to other users," and "infect other MP3, JPEG, GIF, or QuickTime files." Woo-hoo, our first virusy thing! We're finally in the big leagues! Now that Mac OS X has been proven susceptible to icky stuff like this, can Apple finally start counting on massive purchases by government and big business buyers?

Meanwhile, we have to say, this MP3Concept beast is pretty darn clever. Apparently the Trojan itself is really and truly an actual MP3 file, and even plays like one if opened in iTunes-- but there's a payload of arbitrary code in the file's ID3 tag, the chunk of data that's supposed to hold all that info about a song's title, artist, album, genre, favorite IHOP pancake syrup, etc. So the mechanism, if we understand it, is that if the MP3 file is double-clicked, the code gets executed-- and it can then do whatever evil stuff it wants (well, short of really screwing with the system software; at least Mac OS X prompts for admin passwords before letting anyone do any serious damage) and then send the file to iTunes, so that the user doesn't even notice anything wrong: he double-clicked an MP3, it opened in iTunes, and iTunes played it. And only much later does he notice that all of his files have been renamed after characters from '50s sitcoms. There's nothing worse than finding out your iPhoto library database no longer works because it's been renamed "Herb Dunkel."

So there you have it, folks; our humble platform has finally been ushered into the Virus Age. Apple's not kidding; Mac OS X really is getting more and more applications every day! But hey, at least the Mac virus folks will finally get to feel like they're earning their paychecks.