Symantec is crying “Wolf” again, this time about a virus it has named “OSX.Macarena.” It is more of the same as before–a proof-of-concept release of source code. It does not carry a malicious payload, nor is there any evidence that it was released in the wild. Symantec’s “detailed” report is curiously undetailed; as usual, they don’t simply say it doesn’t exist in the wild, instead they only say there were “0-49” infections, the virus was on “0-2” web sites, and that “geographical distribution” is “low.” Which makes it sounds like it exists in the wild when it doesn’t.

As usual, people are interpreting this as yet another harbinger of the impending release of the first-ever harmful virus in the wild targeted at Mac OS X. Since it is proof-of-concept, the idea goes, it will be easy for someone to take that shell and pack a harmful piece of code inside. I can’t speak to that intelligently as I have zero experience with coding, but it occurs to me that these proof-of-concept shells have been around for the better part of a year now and none have been re-engineered to carry malicious code, as was predicted every time. What’s the hold-up?

As before, there’s still no need to rush out and buy anti-virus software, unless you want to be really, really safe.