The number of malware that can infect Mac computers has increased significantly last decade (2010-2019), particularly scams (including tech support scams) and fake anti-malware apps. since when malware for Mac computers did exist?
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9Instead of accepting the first answer that appears, please wait 24 hours between posting your question and accepting an answer. As you can see, a better answer (Raffzahn's) has been posted. Thanks!– DrSheldonFeb 22 '20 at 18:40
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The first viruses for Mac were targeting Hypercard. The first Hypercard virus appeared in about 1991. Hypercard has a scripting language called HyperTalk, which was powerful enough to perform file-system accesses, thus allowing Hypercard viruses to discover and spread to other stacks (HyperCard "documents").
answered Feb 21 '20 at 22:33
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4Raffzahn answer links to an Hypercard virus from 1988. Do you have a reference for 1991 being the first one?– CœurFeb 22 '20 at 12:24
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Raffzahn is correct. I forgot about Dukakis. Three Tunes was 1991. Feb 29 '20 at 1:00
The very first virus might have been
- nVir of 1987
Although technically not one, nVir worked much like a boot sector virus. Its source code did circulate on BBSes very soon after, leading to short flooding of copies. Still the damage was rather small. Not much later
- HyperAvenger of 1988 (also called Dukakis-Virus)
made its debut. It was based on HyperCard and became much more visible than nVir - after all, HyperCard was kind of a hype at the time.
During the mid 1990s a series of Word- and Excel-Macro virii did plague the Mac community.
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6I was involved in Mac support from about that time and nVir is the first one I remember encountering. Feb 22 '20 at 16:16
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4"Virii" is a plural for "virius" (if there were such a noun). Plural for "virus" in English is "viruses", see this thread.– RuslanFeb 23 '20 at 9:35
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1It took years of therapy to be able to forget about the Office Macro virii. Years. 😼 Feb 24 '20 at 1:53
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It's a little mortifying to admit, but I wrote the Dukakis virus when I was 14. It was remarkably easy, once I'd had the idea... HyperCard let any program ("stack") freely modify the script of the "home stack". Script in the home stack would run when any other stack started up, and it could then freely modify the script of that stack, etc...– leremjsOct 14 at 16:07