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Report That OS X Snow Leopard May Include Antivirus
File this firmly in the "rumor" category for now. the JoshMeister writes (in the third person) "Mac antivirus company Intego broke the story this morning that Apple is apparently including antivirus functionality in its upcoming operating system, Snow Leopard. But which antivirus engine is Apple using? Security researcher Joshua Long discusses the likely candidates."
Can we get a weather report from Hell ?
Its not the years, its the mileage
Virus protection? If Mac vs PC guy has taught me anything, it's that MAC'S DON'T GET VIRUSES! Don't lie to me...
>It's a trojan that only installs if you're stupid enough to download a program from a dodgy source
Err, thats pretty much the biggest vector for malware. Pick any popular app for Windows, go to pirate bay, download it, run it, and guess what? You have an infection.
Storm botnet was built by people double-clicking greetingcard.exe.
Dont underestimate people's abilities to go out of their way to find malware to run. You'll find tha you dont need to exploit any vulnerability other than ignorant on the user's part to root the machine.
The "virus"mentioned in the screen shot isn't much of a virus. It's a trojan that only installs if you're stupid enough ...
I could put Ubuntu on a netbook and give it to my sister and she'd have no clue how to use it. But you can bet every last cent that if the source code to a virus was presented to her she would have it compiled (with all the right flags set to target her correct OSX version) and installed in a few minutes. It's borderline magic. Did you know they have LimeWire on Macs now? She managed to find that, install it and learn how to use it on her own but didn't have a clue as to how to move pictures from her old Windows machine to her MacBook. If only curing cancer compromised your computer, she'd have that done in a heart beat.
I knew she would be better off with a mac but your statement of "anybody who uses a Mac knows" makes me cringe. Bottom line: do not underestimate stupidity.
My work here is dung.
I don't think that would help, mad-clickers implicitly trust everything.
Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
It's time we came clean. Macs do get viruses. Actually they get a lot of viruses. Really the OS is basically viruses and itunes. We pretend like we can work on these systems but it's just a screen full of viruses all having sex with eachother. The reason you never heard about it because back in ought 3' we took an oath to never reveal that terrible terrible truth. We relied on Windows users hatred of Macs preventing them from finding out. But, now that it's out in the open I suppose we ought to move forward and try to rebuild, maybe accept the situation and try to secure our OS.
So uhh.. Windows users... How do you make a *shudder* bug fix?
And that was the last Terry Fox run I ever participated in.
Apple has been light on details they have made public about Snow Leopard. We know they implemented a CDSA security architecture, expanded use of the sandboxing, and now there is this report of actual malware scanning, but the info on Apple.com is basically nonexistent. I surmise this is intentional. Security people either have developer accounts or will read up on this stuff in technical papers when NDA's expire next week. For regular users, Apple doesn't even want to bring up security as an issue. They will make blanket marketing statements about it, but they would rather leave all the details to more technical venues. This was their policy for Leopard too, with most users having no clue that a full port of TrustedBSD's mandatory access controls was included and being used to sandbox certain potentially vulnerable services.
I wouldn't put too much faith in "drag to install", because most malware doesn't actually need system privledges.
Also, reportedly websites have figured out how to make Safari automatically download this trojan and then launch the installer program. Users still need to enter their password, but having the dialog automatically popup makes the social engineering step that much easier.
Business. Numbers. Money. People. Computer World.
Dunno. While no platform is 100% secure, design does count for a lot. There are a lot of "proof of concept" hacks out there for the Mac, but very, very, very few "in the wild" 'sploits floating around, especially self-replicating ones like viruses and worms. The installed base of Internet-going Macs is a few dozen million at the least, and mostly personal computers with personal info and used to buy stuff online - prime targets for the big-shop black hats. I doubt very much it's not worth their while... I just think they can't go after a system with even a moderate level of security.
I don't think this says something about Apple (see the part above about "proof of concept" hacks), I think this says a ton about Microsoft.
I really don't buy "ecosystem" arguments - why is IIS and MSSQL pwnd on a regular basis by automated attacks, but Apache and MySQL only once in a blue moon (and Oracle almost never)?
So, we have a Slashdot story speculating about the outcome of a story on another site which uses unknown, and not necessarily reliable source, about a possible feature in an unreleased OS.
Can we please wait until there is real evidence before shouting that the sky's falling please.
Oh, sorry, this is Slashdot! ;-)
As for the article: *IF* it is true, fine! Who cares what anti-virus engine it uses as long as it works and is ready for any dangerous malware which does come along for MacOS?
(And for those who wish to gloat, no OS is fully immune, especially from the security hole at the keyboard. Why does Linux need an anti-virus product like ClamAV?! Linux doesn't have any viruses.... ;-))
Agrajag: "Oh no, not again!"
Although some Snow Leopard details may not be available yet, most components of the Mac OS X security architecture pre-date Snow Leopard, and details are available, in places like this... Mac OS X Security Architecture
If you mod me down, I shall become more powerful than you could possibly imagine.
I thought that Trojans were made to prevent the replication of those huge two-legged viruses.
No, that is condoms made by a company called Trojan. The virus trojans are based off of the wooden horse left outside Troy by the Greeks. It looked legitimate, but it was a trap.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trojan_horse_(computing)