While Sophos says it is continuing to examine OSX/Leap-A and will issue further information shortly, its customers have been automatically protected against the worm since early morning on February 16, 2006. The company's website says the prevalance is low, despite the media attention to the new worm. Mac security specialist Intego said that it offers protection through its VirusBarrier antivirus program. "he the newly discovered "Oompa-Loompa Trojan horse," also called OSX/Oomp-A or Leap.A, affects Macintosh computers running Mac OS X on PowerPC processors, but does not delete files, according to Intego. The software, however, does replicate itself by sending itself to users' iChat buddies and infects applications on computers where it runs, enabling those applications to in turn spread the virus. The company said it updated its virus definitions on February 14 to provide protection. Meanwhile, users can protect themselves by turning off the option to automatically accept files via iChat, according to Symantec. "This first Macintosh OSX threat is an example of the continuing spread of malicious code onto other platform," said Vincent Weafer, senior director at Symantec Security Response. "However, this worm will not automatically infect, but will ask users to accept the file, giving potential victims a heads up and the opportunity to avoid infection. The important piece of advice for any iChat users running OSX 10.4 is not to accept file transfers, even if they come from someone on a buddy list."