Report That OS X Snow Leopard May Include Antivirus 335
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."
Virus on MAC ? (Score:4, Funny)
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A few highlights from TFA:
Re:Virus on MAC ? (Score:4, Funny)
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... except with all the additional features for half the disk space and twice the performance
Re:Virus on MAC ? (Score:4, Funny)
Snow leopard? More like slow leopard!
(I had to do it... there was no other way)
Re:Virus on MAC ? (Score:5, Insightful)
>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.
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Really? I must not be trying hard enough then. And I thought my ratio was bad now...
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Pick any popular app for Windows, go to pirate bay, download it, run it, and guess what? You have an infection. Really? I must not be trying hard enough then. And I thought my ratio was bad now...
Its not quite THAT bad, but I do agree that this is the number one way of getting the nasties on your computer. The thing that bothers me is when I start to wonder what percentage of mac users there are out there that will pompously go to whatever sites they feel like, downloading and installing whatever software they feel like, on the basis that "Mac's don't get viruses." This is a step in the right direction. I applaud the idea of the built-in virus protection. Hopefully it comes out more useful than
Re:Virus on MAC ? (Score:5, Insightful)
Have you seen the obscene amount of Mac shareware out there? Don't get me wrong a lot of stuff does "just work" on the Mac, but a lot of niches aren't filled, and it seems like while on Windows you're likely to find spyware infested free programs, and on Linux you're likely to find reputable OSS programs, on Mac you better be prepared to pay $20 a pop for all those little apps. Maybe I'm just being naive, but it doesn't seem like they'd all be around if some significant chunk of mac users weren't downloading and buying these programs.
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You can find reputable OSS programs on Windows and Mac also.
Re:Virus on MAC ? (Score:4, Informative)
The mac "culture" is much more willing to purchase a $20 app that fills a tidy hole in their system. This is both an emergent behavior and a forced behavior. Forced because the ecosystem for macs is a fraction of that for windows, the number of cracking or hacking groups targeting pay-for apps is much lower. Emergent because, the already high barrier to entry (iTax) is locking out a large amount of those who are inclined to buy a $300 PC and fill it with warez. Both of these factors also work to suppress the creation of an equivalent to the spyware-infested freeware app "scene" present on Windows.
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Re:Virus on MAC ? (Score:5, Insightful)
Sounds like you haven't seen the Mac warez scene. There's heaps of warez, cracks, serials out there for Mac applications -- you can get them as readily as you can get Windows ones.
I do think it's true that Mac users are more likely to buy/pay for "shareware" apps though.
Offtopic, but "shareware" seems like the wrong word for it. Doesn't feel quite right.
Also, I dispute the notion that there's not much open source/freeware on Mac OS X. There is, but like a lot of open source stuff, they're often not the best-of-breed. I'd rather pay some money and get the best there is, like Transmit (for FTP) and CSSEdit/Espresso (for editing HTML and CSS).
The open source apps I use the most on OS X are Firefox and VLC.
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http://www.versiontracker.com/macosx/ [versiontracker.com]
http://mac.softpedia.com/ [softpedia.com]
http://www.opensourcemac.org/ [opensourcemac.org]
http://www.macorchard.com/ [macorchard.com]
http://www.macupdate.com/ [macupdate.com]
I've purchased 3 apps since switching to Mac last year. VMWare Fusion, an encoding app, and another to sync my gmail calendars to OS X Mail's calendars. Everything els
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Just a FYI, you can now sync your osx calendar to google via calDav for both read and write. I didn't use iCalendar until I found this out because I wasn't going to buy an app to sync them.
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Because it has a modern, working gui? Because sound works? Because it interfaces cleanly with a corporate environment (he mentioned Exchange)?
Linux on the desktop is...okay, if you're at home and don't mind not having access to tremendous amount of mainstream desktop software.
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Re:Virus on MAC ? (Score:5, Funny)
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>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.
Sure, but on a mac most installs consist of dragging a piece of software (app folder) to a location of your choice. System files common to all users are only affected if and only if you give an app permission via a password. If you download something from TPB and it asks to run an installer, sure, there's a risk, but most apps are just drag n drop to install. In windows pretty much everything has an installer and it's anybody's guess what it does.
Re:Virus on MAC ? (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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Safari will do this for installer packages and mount .dmg files if "Open safe files after opening" is enabled.
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I wouldn't put too much faith in "drag to install", because most malware doesn't actually need system privledges.
Sure, but then it's quarantined to the specific user.
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.
Source? I think this might have been true with older versions of OSX or Safari but i'm not sure it still works. I use firefox and even still whenever I download something and want to run it it reminds me that it's downloaded from the Internet and might not be safe (even when it's not installed system-wide).
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A horse is a four legged animal, but a four legged animal is not necessarily a horse, or a cat would be a horse. Trojans and viruses are both malware, but a trojan isn't a virus unless it is self replicating.
Re:Virus on MAC ? (Score:4, Funny)
I thought that Trojans were made to prevent the replication of those huge two-legged viruses.
Re:Virus on MAC ? (Score:5, Funny)
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) [wikipedia.org]
Amen (Score:5, Insightful)
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really, it asked for the admin password?
But your point is true.
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people double-clicking greetingcard.exe.
Oooh, cool, a new greeting card and it's not even November yet! Can anyone send me a copy?
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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.
That's right. Five years ago, while speaking at a security conference, I offered a bet, that I would take a non-malicious but virus-pattern-matching program, call it "evil.exe" or something, put it up for download with a clearly worded webpage saying "this is malware, do not under any circumstances run it", and I'm sure if I could get the link on /. or something, thousands of people would run it.
Nobody took me up on that bet, everyone nodded in agreement.
Three years later, at the same conference, I told eve
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No problem. Just design a new OS from the ground up for the 21st century. In the 20th century things were slow enough without a sandbox.
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Re:Virus on MAC ? (Score:5, Insightful)
The "virus"mentioned in the screen shot isn't much of a virus [macworld.com]. 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.
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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.
Good point. Apple should probably be more explicit about what it entails when you are asked for your admin password and the risks associated.
Re:Virus on MAC ? (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
I wouldn't call it stupidity. Just because somebody isn't aware of all possible malware infection routes that doesn't make them stupid, naive is perhaps a better word for it or perhaps just unlucky. Expecting the average user to be aware of every possible way of getting his computer infected is about as realistic as expecting a non-medically educated person to be aware of all possible ways to get a disease. We all know any number of things we can do to avoid getting diseases, some of these behaviors are even hardwired into our DNA but they aren't 100% effective. How many of us are likely to go through life without ever catching a disease like, say, Influenza?
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I agree. And MacOSX does not typically market to the technical or sophisticated user. Sure, some are, but that's not what built Apple's reputation for "easy and just works." Technical and sophisticated users know that "easy" and "just works" usually means inflexible and not adaptable. So what portion of Mac users would be likely to fall for tricks and gimmicks to get people to install the software themselves? Not unlike Windows, MOST of them. "Wanna see a Hot or Funny or Sad or Important or Secret vid
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Yet, the technical or sophisticated user tends to go with a Mac. Why is that? Don't believe me? Visit a developer's conference.
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Apple needs to stop marketing itself as immune from viruses. They have never been immune, just not targeted and fortunately better built so that only a true idiot user with correct privileges can take down the whole system. Unfortunately their marketing that Macs are immune leads to user complacency and foolhardiness. The OS security is useless when the users circumvent or ignore it, which is what has happened with Mac malware, as well as a lot of newer Windows stuff. An idiot Mac user with admin privileges
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Apple needs to stop marketing itself as immune from viruses. They have never been immune, just not targeted and fortunately better built so that only a true idiot user with correct privileges can take down the whole system.
Which is why my dad, who uses my old powerbook, does not have admin priviliedges. He can still install apps by dragging them to his desktop or elsewhere. He's never had a problem or even called me for support other than advice on where to find a good replacement battery (old one was over 5 years old and barely held a charge). My mom, on the other hand, with her vista box, even without admin privs, is constantly calling me about why it's so slow and so on and so forth. It's a daily tech support thing. S
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There's been multiple viruses using failures in the system to install themselves on the apple hardware without any user input.
My favorite is the iphone exploit where somebody could root your device & record everything barely by sending an IM :)
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The problem is that you don't need a password to overwrite everything in /Applications.
I can totally see a program that contains a virus that infects iTunes, Safari, whatever. It'll be like the oldschool DOS viruses that infected every .exe on your drive.
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Snowing ? (Score:5, Funny)
Can we get a weather report from Hell ?
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Wait, I'll ask Ballmer. He will meet Cheney in his home tonight for some sweet sweet love. He can tell us, if he survives it.
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81 and partly cloudy just outside my office. That's close enough, right?
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Re:Snowing ? (Score:5, Funny)
It's currently "SCO is not dead yet", with a 25% chance of "Microsoft acts with integrity".
Linked Twitter Feed? Reporting in the Third Person (Score:3)
Re:Linked Twitter Feed? Reporting in the Third Per (Score:4, Insightful)
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Scanning (Score:5, Funny)
At its core a virus scanner is just a wrapper around a multipattern byte matcher, so maybe it's better to ask whether they're using Aho-Corasick or Wu-Manber...
AV for consumers will be free (Score:3, Interesting)
Microsoft is soon to have free-for-consumers anti-virus and anti-malware software as well:
http://www.microsoft.com/security_essentials/ [microsoft.com]
Re:AV for consumers will be free (Score:4, Funny)
The most effective thing they give users to protect from malware is a hammer to hit the person in the head each time they install or click on something they don't trust.
Re:AV for consumers will be free (Score:5, Informative)
I don't think that would help, mad-clickers implicitly trust everything.
Re:AV for consumers will be free (Score:4, Insightful)
I use ClamXAV (Score:5, Informative)
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For those uses, wouldn't a virtual machine make more sense?
Parallels, at least, supports both Linux and Windows clients.
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And also unfortunately, Parrallels does not have proper hardware level GPU access from systems running in the virtual machine. So no 3D hardware acceleration or CUDA programming support, which happens to usually be the reason(s) for me to try the other OS's.
Actually, Parallels does work with BootCamp though, so you can use the VM from within OS X when that is acceptable and roll it back to previous snapshots for security reasons, and still boot from the partition for those instances when you need to access the GPU directly, like for certain games. Of course it also costs money and it the security is not a concern for you, there's not a lot of reason to bother with it.
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Doesn't OS X already run ClamAV internally? At least as of 10.4, Server does [oreillynet.com] but I haven't heard about client.
Nonsense (Score:5, Funny)
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Grammar Nazi says: "When your sentences' contain plural's, the plural's do not need apostrophe's. Apostrophe's are for possesive's and contraction's."
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But my teacher told me it mean's "HERE COMES AN S"!
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I don't understand why you people think that any OS can be imprevious to a trojan?
As an OS X user, this is great news.
This way I don't have to wonder if my Apple using friends are downloading Photoshop from TPB and getting infected.
But, no, as of yet, there are still no self-propagating viruses or worms for OS X.
Even though my snide Windows friends keep sending me the sky is falling emails every month about OS X being just as vulnerable as Windows.
Re:Nonsense (Score:4, Insightful)
I don't understand why you people think that any OS can be imprevious to a trojan?
Nobody with half a brain thinks that. The only way to make an OS totally proof against trojans is to stop users from installing new apps, and that's something that general desktop computing hasn't gone down the road of.
What's curious about OSX is that it doesn't have the sort of culture that leads to trojans being a problem. I'm not sure why this is; maybe it is because Mac users are more inclined to buy their software? (Indeed, they buy things that on other platforms would be free...) Accepting (apparently) legitimate payments is not a black hat sort of thing to do, because it is far too easy to trace back to a real identity.
I suppose it also helps that there aren't that many "usability of security" issues in the supplied OSX core apps, so users are less likely to do something catastrophic by accident.
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Remember that OSX takes last place by a huge margin each year in pwn2own. OSX is certainly more vulnerable, but it gets attacked a lot less considering the 3.5% market share.
At the same time, the rewards for pwning the OS X machine are greater (in resale value at the least, ignoring personal preferences), too, so you'll have more people going for it in the challenge where as (as you state) in the real world the pay off is actually less than if you pwned a different os.
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By a huge margin?
What metrics are you using? Time?
Because it certainly isn't the quantity of exploits.
Re:Nonsense (Score:4, Informative)
Heck, maybe it's also why Linux virus scanners exist. Besides the oddball Mac trojan, the Mac AV probably keeps up with PC viruses as well. Not because they can run them, but to avoid being a "carrier". If you use the Windows firesharing, many worms seek out the shares. It's possible those worms may find an open Mac share and infect files in there. The Mac won't get infected, but Windows PCs accessing those shares can become infected. Better the Mac catch it and quarantine...
Linux Foundation announces partnership with McAfee (Score:2, Funny)
San Francisco, AP
In response to a sharp rise in popularity in 2014 (the year of the Linux desktop,) the Linux Foundation has announced that antivirus technology from McAffee will be built into all versions of the Linux kernel starting with v 2.6.45. When asked about this latest development, Linus Torvalds said, "I believe that adding 2,476,000 lines of antivirus code in order to protect Linux users is the most effective solution and can only benefit Linux users for years to come."
That'll be the day that hell freezes over.
Re:Linux Foundation announces partnership with McA (Score:5, Funny)
The Linux foundation regrets distributing Mcaffee which is a rootkit whose name looks a lot like McAfee.
good for Apple (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:good for Apple (Score:5, Informative)
Immune? No. Reasonably secure by design, yes.
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when it comes to OSs and security, a lot /.ers (and lots of other people, to be sure) seem to have this enormous blind spot; they simply cannot understand (or bring themselves to acknowledge, as the case may be) that there is, indeed, a difference in how well designed different OSs are to repel attacks. Why is this?
Because a lot of /.ers understand enough about computer security to know that the supposed advantages from Apple's vaunted design are bullshit. Does Apple use a UNIX architecture, with privilege separation and a minimal attack surface. Yes, and that's good. Does that help? Not really. Desktop security is a lot more sophisticated today than it was a decade ago. But so are the attackers.
First, while Apple has cut down on the 'invisible' attack surface of running, internet exposed services, you've still got
Update your content for Snow Leopard (Score:3, Interesting)
Does Apple use a UNIX architecture, with privilege separation and a minimal attack surface. Yes, and that's good. Does that help? Not really. Desktop security is a lot more sophisticated today than it was a decade ago. But so are the attackers. First, while Apple has cut down on the 'invisible' attack surface of running, internet exposed services, you've still got a web browser and that's turned into a monstrous attack surface in the past few years. Furthermore, Apple has poor defense in depth. ASLR in OS X
Re:good for Apple (Score:5, Insightful)
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)?
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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.
Well, there's apparently enough of them "in the wild" that Snow Leopard beta testers have discovered an unannounced anti-malware feature. Why not try to nip this in the bud?
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and the majority of desktop users switch to Macs
Yeah. Right. In what wet dream involving the great savior did you come up with that? ;)
(P.S.: They should use that sentence instead of "citation needed". Would be much more fun. ^^)
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I don't think they're immune, but I have yet to get any (that I know about). I even run windows sometimes. But then, I at least keep my exposure to such things to a minimum. The same cannot be said for everyone, but just so long as I can keep using the computers the way I want to use them, I don't care what others are doing.
There's a lot to be said for supporting herd immunity [wikipedia.org] throughout the internet. In principle, I also don't really give a damn what people do with their own computer (short of sympathetic pain when I see how horrible it is to use some people's bogged-down, (crap|mal|spy)ware-ridden computers), but viruses, worms, etc. take advantage of the vulnerable majority and make the internet a less safe place for everyone, even those of us who can generally take care of ourselves. I suspect (hope?) Apple's goal is to in
Re:good for Apple (Score:4, Insightful)
That has never been a dream of Apple's...
Rubbish. Maximizing profits is the dream of every publicly-held company, whether the founders like it or not. Go out and ask some Apple shareholders...I have a feeling you'll hear a different story.
Apple sees themselves as selling a luxury brand experience. That means it must NEVER become too popular lest it lose it's cache. The success of the iPod and iPhone are already pushing Apple market share to dangerous levels but they are just 'consumer electronics' and not the Mac itself.
The funny thing is that you actually believe that. Yes, Apple is considered a "luxury brand", but to suggest that Apple would prefer not to sell their products that they spend such a large amount of money marketing and advertising in order to preserve their "cache" is one of the most ridiculous things I've heard. Steve Jobs maybe an arrogant elitist, but he's a businessman first and foremost.
Exciting? (Score:2)
Exciting? Not the word I would use...depressing maybe.
Bound to happen (Score:3, Interesting)
As OS X becomes more popular it's pretty much inevitable that people will *want* AV on their computers. Be it from the paranoid to the clueless who "heard from a friend of a friend that Macs are insecure" -- or just someone playing it safe -- a move like this would make sense to ease consumer fears. Yes, they already sell AV products from third-parties, but in the same way Windows has its own set of security tools this is Apple's way of showing that you don't just have to trust them, they're actively involved in proving the safety of their product.
Re:Bound to happen (Score:5, Interesting)
So when will they actually implement something genuinely useful against real security threats, like package management?
If you don't think Apple has been adding useful technologies to stop security threats, you haven't been paying attention. Of course most people don't they just assume because Apple doesn't advertise their security technologies to the mainstream public, such technologies they don't exist. You remember that vulnerability in Apple's ZerConf implementation (one of the few enabled by default services on OS X)? No? That's because Apple had sandboxed the entire service in Leopard making the vulnerability impossible to exploit without another exploit for the sandbox, which never materialized. Maybe you remember that said vulnerability did exist on several Linux distros and was exploitable?
McAfee (Score:5, Funny)
Let them run McAfee. Those Macs run too fast as it is, and that should make those shooter games playable by us mere humans.
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Yeah. Then we Germans could also call it Mac-Affe (Affe = monkey/ape), and state that our Macs now are protected by monkeys. ;)
Our terrible terrible secret... (Score:5, Funny)
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?
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same way you make a pig fly
You can write code with a trebuchet?
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Security Details (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Mac OS X Security Architecture (Score:5, Informative)
Come the time for rain, it'll pour. (Score:3, Insightful)
Problem with having a single, unified anti-virus (if ever such a thing is reliably possible), programmers will have an easier time guessing what protections they'll face when creating a virus.
Windows might not be the most... or... almost... close to the most stable series of operating systems, but there sure is a fair bit of variety involved in each installation. A vulnerability that can hit any generic OS X installation hard will be able to hit every other generic OS X installation hard.
This'll end in tears if Apple and friends don't keep vigilant on every threat. A problem with the die-hard proprietary and user friendly nature of Apple products is Apple are now the sole caretaker, the mother and father, the reason and the nonsense to every single computer they've made residency in. End users aren't encouraged to practice personal responsibility, they pay and trust... pay for trust...
Think Different, Indeed.
Re:Come the time for rain, it'll pour. (Score:5, Insightful)
Problem with having a single, unified anti-virus (if ever such a thing is reliably possible), programmers will have an easier time guessing what protections they'll face when creating a virus.
I agree, to some extent. In terms of attacks on the antivirus system itself a single system may be more vulnerable. In terms of bypassing signatures, however, there is no reason centralized anti-malware cannot draw signatures from disparate feeds, the user subscribes to, be they supplied by Apple, open projects, or commercial companies, for free, or charge.
That said, Apple including malware detection doesn't mean users can't install other malware detection services as well. ClamAV isn't going away just because Apple ships a built in competitor.
End users aren't encouraged to practice personal responsibility, they pay and trust... pay for trust...
From Apple's Snow Leopard Web site:
Security Advice The Mac is designed with built-in technologies that provide protection against malicious software and security threats right out of the box. However, since no system can be 100 percent immune from every threat, antivirus software may offer additional protection. Here are some other ways to help keep your information as safe as possible:
That sounds to me like end users are being encouraged to practice personal responsibility.
Given that we've had the golden master for weeks.. (Score:5, Informative)
...and no such thing exists there, this would seem to be completely made up bullshit.
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I think this is simply a signature engine built into the Safari downloader. Mozilla Firefox has the exact same thing in version 3.5. After you do
Hmm.. Speculation on a rumour from unkown source. (Score:5, Informative)
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.... ;-))
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hahaha, yeah that command line on the macs is a mere toy~
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Who actually cares about macs? Perhaps now their users will go buy a real computer. Not the fisher price toys they play with now.
We really need to start enforcing that minimum age requirement for Slashdot membership...
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
AV should be part of the operating system
I agree, but I don't necessarily think that means destroying competition and the existing industry. For the practical reason of encouraging better results through competition and for legal reasons in most jurisdictions, I think OS vendors should be building a plug-in anti-malware architecture that allows end users to subscribe to multiple security feeds, each of which provides whitelists, blacklists, greylists, and potentially ACLs for software.The OS should handle acquiring and verifying the source of the