if you are smart about what you are downloading you are fine. if you are pirating software and are all over the torrents, then you might get a malicious program. that's your own damn fault, too. no sympathy here. i own four macs right now, and i've owned macs for many years. never a problem, not a single one. can't say the same for my windows computers.
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Snow Leopard Antimalware Feature Gaining Publicity
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Thank you for the info. My mother in law is always clogging up the desk top with stuff. Usually emailed videos and such but she doesn't know anything about computers. It freaks me out when she' s next to my 24" beauty.
In regards to the post though. I would see this as a good thing. Although I can see where M$ is gonna take it. I've owned 3 Dells... I now own 2 Macs + phones and such.... and never looking back as long as Jobs stays on top of things.
I'm guessing this is one reason why Apple hasn't promoted or even mentioned this feature. They don't want people to think that this is completely protecting them, since in reality it is just looking for two specific pieces of malware.
Of course the other reason is that they don't want to promote the idea that any software even has the ability to harm a Mac.
Strange, I have knowledge of Macs yet I deny that they ever get viruses. Can they be carriers? Sure. But they do not get infected. Perhaps I don't exist...
On another note, it makes it ironic that Apple commissioned the Mac vs PC commercial where the security guy for Vista was saying "Cancel or Allow" and OS X will now be doing this.
It's different because Apple's prompt only occurs when there is actual malware. The Vista prompt occurs when performing various operations, no matter what.
Vista: cries "Wolf! Wolf! Wolf! Wolf! Wolf! Wolf!"
OS X: cries "Wolf" -- when there's a wolf.
It's a big difference.
Vista's approach probably actually helps trojan horses because it trains users to think of security warnings as something to ignore, disable or click-through as fast as possible.
But does it work with Firefox?
I think this is a good idea. It's better to be ahead of the curve than to play catch up if someone ever does write some nasty mac malware. I personally don't ever expect to need this warning, but lucky me if it saves my ass.
I'm more interested in how it works. I bet it is a part of Safari, and not the OS. Has anyone tested this with Firefox?
I think this is a good idea. It's better to be ahead of the curve than to play catch up if someone ever does write some nasty mac malware. I personally don't ever expect to need this warning, but lucky me if it saves my ass.
I'm more interested in how it works. I bet it is a part of Safari, and not the OS. Has anyone tested this with Firefox?
There won't be a proliferation of malware - because Macs simply don't get virus', trojans, or suffer from malware like Windows machines do ... right?
Apologists will hail the news as a great proactive approach by Apple. The rest of us are wondering why Apple even bothered - considering how "in your face" Mac enthusiasts are about not being susceptible to malware - which is, of course, false.
Apple adds even more security to an already secure OS, and some devious people use this to convince the clueless that Mac OS X is now MORE vulnerable to malware (instead of the opposite). "We am in Bizarro World."
For a good explanation of why Mac OS X is so secure, read this:
http://rixstep.com/2/20090826,00.shtml
Criminy, pay attention to the ads if you're going to critique them. You're doing the same annoying thing all those PC whiners out there do and reading statements into the ads that aren't there.
The ads have never once said, "There are no viruses on Macs." It's always done in the context of responding to the presence of viruses on PCs. "There are all these viruses out there." "Not on a Mac." That's not saying there aren't or won't ever be Mac viruses, just that it's nothing like what you have on the PC which is 100% true.
So, I think Apple should pound away on the virus issue as long as they don't make the mistake of claiming it could never happen on a Mac. It's a great selling point.
Thank you for the info. My mother in law is always clogging up the desk top with stuff. Usually emailed videos and such but she doesn't know anything about computers. It freaks me out when she' s next to my 24" beauty.
You should make a 2nd user account for her and change the password on your account.
Make hers a non-administrator (standard) account.
Go to the "login options" section of accounts and turn on fasst-user switching. This will place a pull-down menu by your clock.
Whenever you're not using your computer, click it and select "Login Window." You will NOT be logged out, but whoever uses the computer next will be forced to log into their account, not yours.
This should minimize the damage she can do and clear up your desktop!
I would hurt Apple's reputation more if Mac systems started getting a known identified Trojan and Apple did nothing. This is how MS tried to handle the virus issue several years ago (ignoring it), and it hurt them quite a bit until they finally started being more responsive to the issue.
Arn this is some grade A troll bait right here.
Attention lead script kiddies and Microsoft fanbois:
heuristics is not an admission of guilt nor a sign of surrender.
You can all latch on to this if you want, yelling "they've done it! Apple has been brought to their knees!" but that doesn't make it true. I guess you all have open door policies in your neighborhoods right? If you have locks on your door then that means you are doing something wrong, huh?
Edit: Sorry, size.
Attention lead script kiddies and Microsoft fanbois:
heuristics is not an admission of guilt nor a sign of surrender.
You can all latch on to this if you want, yelling "they've done it! Apple has been brought to their knees!" but that doesn't make it true. I guess you all have open door policies in your neighborhoods right? If you have locks on your door then that means you are doing something wrong, huh?
Edit: Sorry, size.
Well done, that is the point I was going make that with Apple successfully gaining a larger part of the market this is going to be needed as it is becoming a larger target. Also hackers and virus programmers (mainly teenage boys???) would see attacking macs as a new challenge.
Its not having the locks that admits YOUR fault but admitting that their is fault behind the door.
Apple is accepting that crap is going to happen and they will be prepared.
Strange, I have knowledge of Macs yet I deny that they ever get viruses. Can they be carriers? Sure. But they do not get infected. Perhaps I don't exist...
On another note, it makes it ironic that Apple commissioned the Mac vs PC commercial where the security guy for Vista was saying "Cancel or Allow" and OS X will now be doing this.
Oh you exist, you're just wrong. There's plenty of Macro virii that can infect Office documents. Granted, they generally can't do anything on the scale of a virus on Windows, but the fact remains - they are virii, they can affect a Mac. They aren't widespread, but they're out there. Much more prevalent in the OS 9 days.
Yeah ok. Apple is admitting that there are hundreds of thousands of virii out there waiting to infect mac boxen.
Lets see. You are an OS writer, say Apple for instance. You know that there is a trojan out there. Needs to be user installed, won't really spread on its own.
You know the payload and the attack mechanism as well as its signature. Thus you build a solution to scan and warn the user against an installer package for the calls to the rouge installer.
Because the 2009 'ilife' and 'cs4' trojan work was just latching onto the existing installer package.
So because Apple knows that A) People are pirating their warez and B) some script kiddy made script that requires user authentication to drop the payload = false advertising, right?
I know I know. Apple has a measly 10% marketshare. No one knows about Apple, they are just that little OS in the infinite space of Microsoft i know. Virus writers don't care about Mac OS, not because *Nix and NT are just different, no it couldn't be that. Every black hat in the world is just afraid of steve j because steve will go and find them right? I know. I keep telling myself this too. Once Apple approaches 11 or even a whopping 12% of the marketshare THEN we will see some serious worms. Mark my words11!!1!! Since apparently once you reach that 11 or 12 percent threshold your OS just becomes a pit of exploits that even the most novice of users could compromise.
I'm just hoping there'll be a surefire way to prevent or toggle the option of mounting disc images (specifically ISOs) without the OS complaining that the "disk may be damaged," regardless of changes in Disk Utility and the plist files.
My daughter's iMac has the images of all her game/educational discs on the hard drive so that she wouldn't have to insert (and possibly damage) each disc when she wanted to play with that game.
That remained to be my biggest headache in Leopard.
My daughter's iMac has the images of all her game/educational discs on the hard drive so that she wouldn't have to insert (and possibly damage) each disc when she wanted to play with that game.
That remained to be my biggest headache in Leopard.
How could it be anything but a useful addition? It only checks for specific trojans when a specific action is done. (ie. When a .dmg is mounted), if one is found the user is notified.
Right, because one literally gets an 'ache in the head' with a computer virus, whereas malware causes a 'pain in the hindquarters'.
I'm glad Apple got that legal distinction out of the way.
of course this applys to windows users aswell...
Yes, of course. The best offense is an actually intelligent end-user.
PEBKAC is one of the largest causes of software problems.
