MacMag (computer virus)

MacMag was a Macintosh computer virus. It originated from the Montréal offices of MacMag magazine. It was spread in the form of a HyperCard stack called "New Apple Products," which contained very poor pictures of the then-new Apple scanner. The virus would infect the currently active System file whenever the stack was opened. It would then spread to System files on any floppy disk that was inserted in an infected machine.

The virus was programmed to stay dormant until 2 March 1988, the first anniversary of the Macintosh II's introduction. The first time an infected system was booted on that day, the virus displayed a message of peace and deleted itself.

References

*Norstad, John. The Viruses. Disinfectant 3.7.1 ©1988-1997 Northwestern University.