Say what you will about a potential Middle Eastern cyberterrorist plot to induce massive service outages on the Internet by coercing Macs all over the world to flood the 'net with noise on New Year's Eve-- at least it's given the Mac news sites something to write about other than the special reduced-price offer on PowerMenuWindowsPlayer 2.02 (now extended through January!). If you haven't been keeping up, here's the skinny: someone discovered that a "peculiarity" of the networking architecture in Mac OS 9 (and the version of Mac OS 8.6 that shipped with several newer Macs) could potentially allow someone to force Internet-connected Macs to bombard specified targets with junk data, effectively nuking their connections through what's commonly called a "Denial of Service" (DoS) attack. Fanning the flames is the fact that the discoverer of this happy little prospect found out about it because of "probes" his Mac received from somewhere in the Middle East-- hence, the Y2K terrorist conspiracy idea. We've been reveling in the sheer drama of the whole thing ever since the story first broke.

But for conspiracy theories that would make Fox Mulder's head spin, look no further than AtAT's faithful viewers. Indeed, the student has surpassed the master, Grasshopper-- we don't know if it's the lack of sleep or the mind-altering chemicals that "They" have been pumping into our water supply, but somehow we missed the big picture and failed to see what's really going down. Stephen White put the puzzle pieces together, though, working from what he calls "obvious clues": The site that first described the attack is heavy on the "intimidating numbers and ASCII art that lull a sense of complacency into any unsuspecting reader's mind." Then look at the name of the attack: "DoS." Nothing's more likely to instill fear in the Mac community then DOS, right? And what better way to ensure the story's spread than to blame Arab terrorists? Then there's the name of the "discoverer" himself: "Dr. Copeland." Copeland. Copland. Coincidenza? Ha!

So thousands of believing Mac users downloaded and installed the "OTTuner" patch released by Apple to prevent this full-scale terrorist Internet attack-- only to find that it killed their Internet connections completely. Well done, "Dr. Copeland"; well done, indeed. And Steve's not the only one suspicious of this whole scenario; faithful viewer David Murray also forwarded his friend's doubts about the "OTTuner" patch: "Could this be a really sick (and/or Redmond-sponsored) attempt to implicate the Mac in the hundreds of thousands of Windoze crashes we know are just around the corner?" And just what else is that "OTTuner" extension doing on systems that didn't have their Internet connections immediately disabled?

Now, while it's true that the "OTTuner" bug fix is, in fact, being served directly from Apple's own site, that's easy enough to look past with conspiracy-colored glasses-- "Dr. Copeland" is a disgruntled Apple employee, perhaps. Simple! So adjust your aluminum-foil hat, stay away from the fluoridated water, and be wary of ulterior motives when downloading so-called "bug fixes." On the other hand, you could choose to be completely rational, give Dr. Copeland the benefit of the doubt, consider him a concerned Mac user who caught a problem before it caused a meltdown, accept Apple's posted fix as a Good Thing To Install™, load it up, and (assuming you still have Internet services) merrily surf away knowing that your Mac is protected from being enlisted as a pawn by the forces of evil. But where's the fun in that?