THE ART OF COMPUTER VIRUS RESEARCH AND DEFENSE [Electronic resources]

3.15. Resource Dependency on Mac and Palm Platforms

Some computer viruses are dependent on system resources. For example, the Macintosh environment is a very rich platform of resources. Various functions are implemented in the form of resources that can be edited easily via Resource Editors. For instance, there is a menu definition resource on the Mac. Such definitions get invoked according to the applications' menu items. Macs store information in two forks for each file on the disk: the data fork and the resource fork. Resources, stored in the resource fork, contain code. Because even data files can contain resources on the Mac, the distinction between data and code files is not as clear-cut as it is for the PC, for example.³⁶.