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Thread: Macs Join the Rogue Program Club

  1. #1
    Just a Virtualized Geek MrLinus's Avatar
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    Macs Join the Rogue Program Club

    Great place to wake things up. Ran across this on my list of headlines:

    Source: Security Ticker

    F-Secure has reported about the first known rogue antispyware program for MacIntosh computers. Macsweeper is what it goes by. With the growing number of reported fake codec zlob trojans made for Macs, this doesn't surprise me. The first known Mac fake codec was reported just last November. Since then, there has been a steady release of Mac fake codecs to go along with the Windows versions. The last one discovered was on January 11th. If you go through Sunbelt's blog, you'll find many more.

    For now, I'm not sure how you remove it, but it appears to be mainly a nuisance. More updates on this later.
    MacSweeper did respond as noted here by F-Secure. I think this is just showing that regardless of platform you can face issues and get caught with your proverbial pants down.
    Goodbye, Mittens (1992-2008). My pillow will be cold without your purring beside my head
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  2. #2
    Senior Member JPnyc's Avatar
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    I didn't think there was anyone out there writing malware for other platforms, like Mac and Linux. Naive of me, eh?

  3. #3
    Priapistic Monk KorpDeath's Avatar
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    I was just a matter of time. Now what are those MAC commercials gonna say?

    Mac and PC join forces to right all computer wrongs. Problem is PC keeps having to reboot and start over and MAC is so small that it can't effectively fight on it's own. I see a comic book in there somewhere... stay tuned. LOL
    Mankind have a great aversion to intellectual labor; but even supposing knowledge to be easily attainable, more people would be content to be ignorant than would take even a little trouble to acquire it.
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    Senior Member gore's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by KorpDeath
    I was just a matter of time. Now what are those MAC commercials gonna say?

    Mac and PC join forces to right all computer wrongs. Problem is PC keeps having to reboot and start over and MAC is so small that it can't effectively fight on it's own. I see a comic book in there somewhere... stay tuned. LOL
    Mac is the hippy of OSs, if it's doing anything, it's tokin' with malware as we speak tyring to solve everyone's problems and getting resource munchies.

    The stoned virus comes to mind as a Mac friendly one. "You're computer is stoned"... And so were most of the people who designed them, built them and wrote OSs for them.

    Berkeley is only knowing for two things, BSD and LSD, go figure.

  5. #5
    Senior Member isildur's Avatar
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    I can personally confirm that some Mac users are Scotch drinkers.
    Only trust Pipe-smoking Penguins.

  6. #6
    AO übergeek phishphreek's Avatar
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    It's about damn time! Time that general user security issues hit mac users and that mabye I'll have a reason to even look at a mac. I wouldn't ever touch a mac because of both the price and I'm not doing any multimedia projects which requires the mac's only talent.
    Quitmzilla is a firefox extension that gives you stats on how long you have quit smoking, how much money you\'ve saved, how much you haven\'t smoked and recent milestones. Very helpful for people who quit smoking and used to smoke at their computers... Helps out with the urges.

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    Just a Virtualized Geek MrLinus's Avatar
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    You know, the more I think about this the more I'm convinced that stuff like this has little to do with the OS and so much to do with guillability (sp?). The manufacturers of Macsweeper accepted third-party sponsors and don't seem to have regard for what they do. Based on their response, it leads me to believe that they don't care about their users. The users, in turn, have developed a "we'll-never-get-attacked" attitude and let anything in without checking (how many times have you read an EULA of a program? that is where stuff like this is put in for legal reasons).
    Goodbye, Mittens (1992-2008). My pillow will be cold without your purring beside my head
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  8. #8
    AO Guinness Monster MURACU's Avatar
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    whats an EULA?
    \"America is the only country that went from barbarism to decadence without civilization in between.\"
    \"The reason we are so pleased to find other people\'s secrets is that it distracts public attention from our own.\"
    Oscar Wilde(1854-1900)

  9. #9
    Just Another Geek
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    Quote Originally Posted by MsMittens
    You know, the more I think about this the more I'm convinced that stuff like this has little to do with the OS and so much to do with guillability (sp?).
    Very true indeed. As a matter of fact there's nothing in OS-X, Linux, *BSD or Windows that will prevent a user from starting a malicious program and get infected. Think about.. A program can do everything the user can do that starts it. This includes emailing, doing web queries, connect to servers, login IRC etc.. A malicious program started by a user could abuse those possibilities.. Also note that worms like MyDoom and Netsky DO NOT abuse any bugs in the system or really need administrative privileges to be effective (only their bad programming is why they need admin privs). Which means OS-X, linux and bsd users have the same risk to get infected by similar worms as Windows users. Unfortunately some of those users think they're invulnerable.

    Quote Originally Posted by MURACU
    whats an EULA?
    End User License Agreement
    Last edited by SirDice; February 7th, 2008 at 01:40 PM.
    Oliver's Law:
    Experience is something you don't get until just after you need it.

  10. #10
    Just a Virtualized Geek MrLinus's Avatar
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    I think Muracu was being rhetorical and sarcastic.

    In regards to users then, the question is: how do we get them to pay attention to what they are doing? Granted, these are home boxes but I'm seeing more and more companies offer choices for laptops (at VMware we now have options between different manufacturers including Apple for employee laptops). Granted, I can use something like Fusion and create a sandbox effect for my "non-work" stuff that I might use my laptop for (e.g., when on the road -- which I've done a lot of lately -- checking email, etc.).

    I have been pondering that security seems to be a plateau of late and it makes me think that people are starting to dull to the FUDing of things like "security alert orange" (which I hear at the airport non-stop). If this is a user issue, how do we get them to pay attention again without resorting to severe FUDing?
    Goodbye, Mittens (1992-2008). My pillow will be cold without your purring beside my head
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