Trojans for Mac?
 

A friend mailed me some information about a possible trojans which could be included in iWork '09 and Photoshop CS4 t*rrents. Take a look here. Sry, it's a Google translation.

Anyway, how big is the danger of trojans and viruses in OS X? I don't care a bit about them, but I didn't cared in Windows, too. And I had always less than 10 problematic files on my system which were harmless, only indentified as trojans from my antivirus program.

Here`s some more info about this :

http://www.appleinsider.com/articles...e_pirates.html

Seems like this is the first malicious software for mac spread on mass scale. I wonder what will Apple do about this.

Here's another look at the same problem:
http://www.macnn.com/articles/09/04/...botnet.active/

iServices is apparently reaching out to infest Macs with monitoring software and the ability to later gain access to your files through backdoor openers.

I'm hoping Apple can help close up these doors but in the meantime don't download this stuff. use reputable sources or buy it for real ;)

There is absolutely nothing they can practically do about it. No viable OS can or should stop it's owner from doing something stupid if they choose to.

Other than taking control away from the user, the only thing they can do is launch some type of campaign to try to educate their users.

I really wouldn't worry about the Mac trojans anyway, they are pretty hard to get infected with, even if you'd try. The worst you can do is shellcode, IMO.

i think it's too easy to get rid of them, so why to worry about?

Yeah, it's not like a simple shell script could wipe out your entire drive on the next restart.... oh, wait... :eek:

Aside from the fact that you're completely wrong and anyone can install anything they please once they get someone to type in their root pass.

I was talking from a damage-to-the-system perspective (if I make sense) because even the Mac trojans that are out there really don't do much damage anyway... But yes, authentification is required to run scripts that require administrative access.

Most people don't know for what they type their passwords in half of the time (remember, the general Apple consumer is not that tech savvy if at all) and just do it automatically.

If a trojan is hidden in an installer package you can't do anything against it. It could happen very easy in the OSx86 scene: Hey, here's the driver package for the nVidia GeForce 280GTX! Oh yeah, lets install... you have to type your password and you're lost. I think especcially in the scene we should exactly know which package is made from which person. Maybe someone should create a fully new installer only for OSx86 packages, so that we're independent to the Apple installer.

I think viruses which damage the software or the harddisk contents only are rather uncommon today, mostly they want to connect to the net. For this a personal firewall could be handy, I'm using Little Snitch. I'm blocking nearly every program which wants to eatablish an internet connection, even only for updates or something else. Even Quicktime Player and VLC aren't allowed to access the net. Of course, this is no total safety, but it's better than nothing. I have a shell script which is hidden in a .jpg file and can establish system access. But it doesen't any ham, it was an example from Heise Security, a german newspage.

We can open the package with Pacifist and look into it? dont we?
Then if there's a threat, we can act in consequence.