App Maker's Code Stolen in Malware Attack (bbc.com)

Mac and iOS software developer Panic has had the source code for several of its apps stolen. An anonymous reader writes: Panic founder Steven Frank said in a blog post that it happened after he downloaded an infected copy of the video encoding tool Handbrake. He said there was no sign that any customer data was accessed and that Panic's web server was not affected. Users have been warned to download Panic's apps only from its website or the Apple App Store. Panic is the creator of web editing and file transfer apps Coda and Transmit, and the video game Firewatch. On May 2, Handbrake was hacked, with the Mac version of the app on one of the site's download servers replaced by a malicious copy. In what Mr Frank called "a case of extraordinarily bad luck", he downloaded the malicious version of Handbrake and launched it "without stopping to wonder why Handbrake would need admin privileges... when it hadn't before. And that was that, my Mac was completely, entirely compromised in three seconds or less."

Comments

That was a really good malware target..

[SuperKendall]

Although as he said you might wonder why a video encoder would need admin access to a computer, I have to admit that I myself would have been taken in by this from a lifetime of being conditioned that various video players always seem to need system access...

That made Handbrake a really good target for malware as it was more likely people would not question admin access nearly as much.

Re:But...

[Anonymous Coward]

How can this happen? We're always being told there's no viruses on Macintosh.

Fixed that for you. What you were told remains true.