Whether you consider Apple notorious or glorious for having a relative lack of viruses and other malicious content available to ruin your machines, it looks like Apple has gone and done a little forward thinking in their ever-expanding market share, and officially included a virus checker with their upcoming release, Snow Leopard. But, how effective is it?
Does Snow Leopard include an anti-virus app along with all its other OS X improvements? That’s the question The Mac Security Blog are asking, having received tip-offs that disc images infected with a trojan were flagged up as dangerous by Safari.
Microsoft has announced they will be releasing their own antivirus software very soon. Given the codename, “Morro,” the new software will be a competitor to the major antivirus software makers like Symantec and McAfee.
The main goal of this software is to remove trojans, spyware and viruses. That’s it. It’s currently undergoing testing and is likely to see a beta very soon for the public. What’s interesting, is this antivirus software will be free for Windows users, which is likely to stick a thorn in the side of its competitors.
Microsoft tried the antivirus market before with their OneCare bundle, though it required an annual fee. It never really took hold, so now the free price tag is likely to bring in added interest.
Some brand new Viliv S5 MIDs have been found to have viruses infecting them, despite being fresh from the factory. Nobody knows quite how many of the 4.8-inch touchscreen mini-tablets are affected, but there have been multiple reports that those machines have several viruses present.
If ever there was a good reason to keep your computer spyware-free, this is it. Last month a group of more than 100,000 Windows-based PCs saw their operating systems self-destruct, after the botnet that infected them issued the “nuclear option”. Little-used, though apparently present in several different types of trojan, the “kos” or “kill operating system” command basically wipes access to the user’s system.
Various torrents of the Windows 7 RC have been infected with a trojan that, if allowed to run successfully, could open a security hole in a user’s system. The affected torrents have the setup.exe install file encapsulated in a self-extracting archive, along with an installer for the trojan itself; launching it triggers an install of both Windows 7 RC and the malware.
A second version of the trojan infecting pirated copies of iWork ‘09 has been identified, this time distributed with torrents of Adobe Photoshop CS4 for Mac. OSX.Trojan.iServices.B installs with root privileges and then opens a back-door to the trojan author, leaving the Mac potentially open to remote takeover. The malware was identified by security firm Intego, who believe around 5,000 people have already downloaded the pirated CS4.
Apple may have added some neat tricks to iWork ‘09 earlier this month, but they didn’t list a trojan on the spec sheet. That, however, is what at least 20,000 users have found infecting their machines, after illegally downloading a pirated version of the software. The trojan – which obviously Apple didn’t add themselves – is called OSX.Trojan.iServices.A, and can access a Mac’s root OS, modify existing software, and download and install extra components, potentially allowing the authors to remotely take control of the computer.
We have all gotten those annoying ads that use a “scareware” scheme to try and convince you that your computer is infected with a virus. You navigate to a page only to find a popup that appears to be scanning your computer and finding multiple problems. FTC has gone and put an end to this scam and the five anti-virus programs that were involved.
Apple’s much-publicized anti-virus advice has disappeared from the company’s support pages. The document, which “encourages the widespread use of multiple antivirus utilities”, used to be found at http://support.apple.com/kb/HT2550, but at time of posting is no longer there.
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