Pirated copies of Photoshop...with extra "features"

[Paddy]

http://www.macworld.com/article/138432/200...dphotoshop.html

And now for some really bent logic from Symantec's Mike Romo on the subject of the iWork trojan:

QUOTE

“While Symantec Security Response rates OSX.iWork a low-level threat, it is still significant because with the current economic crisis, more and more people might be tempted to pirate software instead of paying for it. What’s particularly vexing is that unless users have some kind of security software, they would never know that their Mac was compromised because the iWork components themselves would work normally.”

I'm assuming here that Mike would prefer people to buy Symantec's anti-virus software for their Macs? So they can protect themselves while they steal other people's software?

http://www.macworld.com/article/138412/tro...82372:b21349489

As with many, and maybe the vast majority of trojans (on the PC side), the person who installs it may not notice anything - his computer may function relatively normally or perhaps slow down a bit, while it's being used remotely to launch denial of service attacks on web sites. Thus the real victim of the pirated software is not so much the person who installed it, but the completely innocent third party web site owner suffering the DoS attack. (I don't know why the huge kerfuffle about this in the responses to the article; that's what a lot of trojans do - victimize others in some way as the compromised machine is used to launch DoS attacks, serve spam etc....have they all been hiding under rocks?)

[Xairbusdriver]

Well, I certainly agree with your 'suspicion' that Mr. Romo is 'encouraging' people to my the companies software. He may just be assuming that more people are looking for cheaper software with out the awareness (that comes from subterranean living?) that you often get more than you think you are. It's not like piracy is something new, anyway. Perhaps the increased 'news/excitement' will reinforce the need to support legitimate sites and the concept of supporting developers for their work. Frankly, I suspect hat it is more often large companies that suffer the most from piracy because of the high costs of programs like CSx, Photoshop, Office, etc. It is somewhat amazing that an $80 suite is considered too expensive enough that people would be willing to steal it. Perhaps I have too high a regard for many computer users, even those who use a Mac. Or maybe it's just the 'monolithic corporation' reputation that is rubbing off on Apple? "People! You can't live without them, you can't live with them..."