Slashdot Mirror
New Targeted Mac OS X Trojan Requires No User Interaction
An anonymous reader writes "Another Mac OS X Trojan has been spotted in the wild; this one exploits Java vulnerabilities just like the Flashback Trojan. Also just like Flashback, this new Trojan requires no user interaction to infect your Apple Mac. Kaspersky refers to it as 'Backdoor.OSX.SabPub.a' while Sophos calls it at 'SX/Sabpab-A.'"
Isn't a Trojan that requires no user interaction by definition a Virus?
NB: The message above might reflect my opinion right now, but not necessarily tomorrow or next year.
I didn't consider mac users lording their "super advanced security and magical virus immunity" as "good times." It's about time someone reminded them that Windows is far more secure, it's just targetted more. This is going to be the beginning of a long line of taking them down a notch.
Oh come on slashdot, I'm a mac fan and even I found this funny. No need to mod down.
I read TFA and all I got was this lousy cookie
But it looks like the good times are over.
At least until you remove Java (and preferably Flash and Acrobat Reader), or set plugins to click-to-run, or they finally implement signed apps and sandboxing (which Apple keeps delaying since developers keep screaming about it).
It's ridiculous that all browsers don't require you to approve plugins, at least on a per-site level, but it's true there are still quite a few sites out there that break in strange ways if some hidden java or flash element fails to load. Still, I'd rather live with that than trust my computers' security to Adobe and Oracle.
How can I believe you when you tell me what I don't want to hear?
It WAS cross-platform (in theory). Apple was slow to release a patch, everyone else (who was up to the latest rev of Java) is fine, because non-Apple Java had a patch for this before the Trojans were deployed.
Java has a better in-theory story than most things exposed to the web because it is (by design) invulnerable to buffer overruns. In practice, however, it uses native libraries for some important stuff, and those have the buffer overrun problem. I don't know the details of this bug, however. I find the seemingly neverending stream of vulnerabilities in everything to be more than a little depressing.
Mac OS 9 had a smaller install base than current Mac OS X and was constantly riddled with viruses. I don't think that market share alone determines whether or not something ends up riddled with viruses. That being said, Apple has been particularity lax about security these last three years.
Sig: I stole this sig.
pfft, out of the frying pan, into the blazing inferno of thrown chairs.
Better fix here.
Not to mention that horrendous experience of connecting a backup hard drive, waiting 30 minutes then have the new OS installation reboot and be exactly how I had everything before doing a reinstall. That moronic process forces me to not waste 10 hours reinstalling everything, every time. Bastards.
Why? Why would Apple want to do this, aside from some insane take over the world theory? They are certainly pushing for signed applications running in nice sandboxes and they're using the Mac store as one way to do it, but why would they want to disable other applications entirely?
To charge their customary 30% for every Mac OS X application?
I don't think Apple is using malware to push for the walled garden (It's bad PR, it's more likely to push people away from the OS entirely. They'd much rather continue their "You don't have to worry about viruses with our super-secure OS!" marketing approach. That said, I do believe they'd love to have Mac OS X as controlled as iOS, if they could figure out how to get away with it.
Warning: Opinions known to be heavily biased.