Summary article about OS X and Malware!

[gunug]

Infoworld has a summary article about the growth in the risk of malware to OS X users:

QUOTE

The Mac's vulnerabilities
In some cases, attackers will seek to exploit vulnerabilities such as currently unpatched flaws in Apple's QuickTime multimedia player application. In other cases, malware writers will use threats based more on social engineering, such as with the MacSweeper rogue cleanup tool that appeared during Macworld Expo, the researcher said.

MacSweeper serves as evidence that developers -- both credible and not -- have already begin to turn more of their attention to Apple platforms, anticipating Mac users' security fears, Marcus said. Although MacSweeper is pitched by its creators as a utility for cleaning malware programs and other unwanted software off of Mac OS computers, it has proven to do almost nothing of the sort, despite its $40 asking price.

David Maynor, chief technology officer of research and consulting firm Errata Security, said that one area where attackers may seek to assail the Mac OS is via flaws found in some of the older open source libraries of software code used in the platform.

Apple also typically lags in patching issues found in those code libraries, such as with the Samba networking protocol used in the company's Mac OS X.

Even when the Samba open source community has created a fix for a known security issue, it often takes Apple three to four months to introduce a related patch for its products, giving any attackers looking to subvert Mac systems a lengthy window of opportunity to do so, Maynor maintained.

"If someone has a list of these open source security issues in the projects included in Mac OS, they could use that against OS X users," said Maynor. "Samba is a perfect example, as there is generally a large window there."

http://www.infoworld.com/archives/emailPri...-attacks_1.html

I guess it was a good thing not to have a big market share!   There was also a thing about the top 25 Tech flops of all time:

http://www.infoworld.com/archives/emailPri...failures_1.html

[Xairbusdriver]

I've read about MindSweeper a few days ago and thought it was a revival of the computer version of the paper and pencil game!

But it appears to be another Trojan Horse that still relies on human behavior to get onto the computer. Not that that isn't a very real flaw in the system. I'm just not sure that some 'human behavior' can ever be completely prevented. That's no excuse for trying to come up with a way of preventing ignorant or complacent users from themselves, but it may indicate how difficult it is to make that protection easy to use and effective. I'd be willing to bet that there are more 'open source' people working on that single problem than Apple has. And the same bet could apply to almost any topic of concern like this.