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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.'"
You now, a paranoid man would say this is an Apple conspiracy to push the Mac community toward the walled garden approach that their iOS devices are stuck in. Imagine if in OS X 10.9 you cannot install any third-party applications unless they come digitally signed from the Mac App Store.
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? The whole corporate development market, the software developer market for both iOS and MacOS would be horribly inconvenienced potentially to the point of walking away from the platform. Legacy software would prevent huge numbers of users from ever upgrading. I could go on listing reasons why Apple wouldn't want to do this, but I still haven't heard one good reason why they would want to do this. Apple doesn't make money on the iOS app store, nor really on the Mac app store. Where's the motive?
I know, it's a stretch, but I never thought it would happen on their mobile devices either.
On mobile devices they got to start fresh and they had a huge problem to solve... battery life. Phones live or die in the market based on battery life and user perception thereof. Locking down software on iOS was primarily about preventing apps that did not use battery efficient threading, push notifications, and system services so that users would be happy about their battery usage. Google is still trying to crack that nut and if you ever get a chance to talk to their devs, they know it.
Funny thing is this Java Runtime vulnerability is also present in the Windows version of Java, and it can be exploited just as easily.
As the island of our knowledge grows, so does the shore of our ignorance.
Hey, I agree, I would never worship a non-living multinational-corporation.
Apple has been going downhill ever since Jobs died. While He was around, He would never have allowed this to happen.