Snow Leopard has integrated anti-trojan horse feature
Look, it’s proof that the threat of malware on the Mac is 100 percent real! Gird your loins boys and girls, because the end is well nigh. Alternately, you could view this as a specific and measured response by Apple to the limited (trojans) threat facing Mac users.
Intego, the antivirus company that played a leading and mostly reasonable role in the OSX.Trojan.iServices.A and OSX.Trojan.iServices.B trojan hysterics of earlier this year, has discovered that Mac OS X 10.6, a.k.a. Snow Leopard, has a built-in anti-trojan feature. Specifically, it detects the RSPlug Trojan in a Safari downloaded .dmg file and then advises the user to abandon all hope, go off grid and buy pallets of canned food to move the file to the trash.
9 to 5 Mac reports that Snow Leopard’s Xprotect currently searches downloads for the OSX.RPlug.A and OSX.iservice trojans. Barring a sudden revelation, these are the only two active and viable trojans that target Mac users and there are no known viruses or worms (ie malware that spread and replicate without direct user complicity).
Source: Intego
We’re naturally curious about this feature, and about how thorough it is. As soon as we can find out more, we’ll post an article here. We wonder just how serious Apple thinks the malware threat is, especially since their latest Get a Mac ads highlight the fact that PCs running Windows suffer from viruses…
Actually, it would seem that Apple’s taken the full measure of the malware threat on the Mac and crafted a specific countermeasure. That is, although there have been threats and uproars, the only proven attack vector to date has been trojans hidden in various software installers downloaded from known warez sites.
So, is it safe to download warez now? Um, no, that will never be a “safe” or even moral option.
As always, stay away from shady (ie porn) Web sites, don’t download warez, be nice to people and small animals, and you should get, run and keep fresh some (free) antivirus software. Personally, I use PCTools iAntiVirus because its regularly updated and it isn’t a resource hog…
What’s your take?
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