...The MacMag Virus

The MacMag virus is particularly significant because it was the first 
recorded case of infection being distributed directly from the manufacturer's
own copies of infected software.

A Tucson programmer, Drew Davidson, demonstrated his skills by compiling this
Macintosh virus for his Canadian publisher friend, Richard Brandow.  It 
contained the following message to celebrate the birthday of the Mac II
computer:

.Richard Brandow, publisher of MacMag, and its entire 
. staff would like to take this opportunity to convey
. their universal message of peace to all Macintosh
.              users around the world.

The original virus was not in itself malicious.  But it spread out of control
when it was added to game disks distributed at a meeting of Macintosh
enthusiasts in Montreal.  The meeting was attended by Marc Canter, a Chicago
software specialist, who picked up one of the infected disks and innocently
tried out the game on his own system when he returned home.  Then, on the 
same computer, Canter did further work on some demonstration software that his
company was developing for Aldus Corporation of Seattle.  Unaware that the
virus had migrated to that program, he sent a disk on to his client, Aldus,
without any reason to suspect a potential problem, inadvertantly passed on
the virus in thousands of copies of their FreeHand graphics program
distributed throughout the United States.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------
"Computer Viruses, Worms, Data Diddlers, Killer Programs, and Other Threats
To Your System: What They Are, How They Work, And How To Defend your PC, Mac,
Or Mainframe."  McAfee, John and Colin Haynes. (C) 1989 by John McAfee and
Colin Haynes.  St. Martin's Press.  p. 101-102.
