Apple to support reps: Don't confirm Mac infections

Mac Shills and Fanbois

It is so funny that this forum has been so full of Mac Shills and Fanbois. Probably the funniest argument I've seen posted is the claim that Macs are still safe because this is a trojan and not a virus, and you can't get infected on a Mac without giving your permission.

You only have to read the results of the last few years of pwn2own competitions to see how easy it is to exploit Safari and Apple with drive-bys as well. It doesn't alter the fact that the easiest exploits to put out in the wild are social engineering ones. Windows is now exploited far more often through social engineering than through a drive-by or other self-replicating virus. It doesn't alter the fact that all the major platforms are vulnerable to more serious exploits. I've had a fully patched linux server rooted through a PHP vulnerabililty, so the fanbois should just shut up about their inherently secure platform, and start educating people on good security practice. That education should begin with Apple getting out of denial.

PEBCAK

Problem Exists Between Chair and Keyboard.

The too stupid to own a computer urban legend springs to mind.

The problem is malware hasn't targeted Macs previously as there were too few to justify writing it and therefore Mac users have gotten used to just opening untrusted attachments/downloads.

Now Macs are popular home machines they are viable targets.

As for the users? They'll learn and McSymanorton will bring out their malware for Macs too.

Is anyone surprised?

They've been deleting user posts for support off their own forums for years

of course not

after all, there are no viruses for OsX , so why would there be a need to tell customers that they have one on their machine.

coat please ( its the asbestos flame-proof one... )

Apple products - computers or Lemon 4's - are perfect; Jobs said so and would he lie?

Once again, Jobs mob is playing dishonest with their customers. Seeing how they have already been taken for premium prices you would hope for, but not expect, straight dealing.

No one is perfect, except in Job's mind - and that the sun shines out his nether end.

Not a virus...

My sister-in-law got one of these. Gay porn appearing randomly after a "virus scanner" was downloaded.

I killed the program, removed it from the "start on login" list and dragged it to the trashcan.

No problems since and certainly not a virus.

If this is the extent of windows infections too, I don't think anyone should worry.

I'm a technician at an ASP and ...

I saw this about 10 times a week before it hit the headlines. It's not an 'infection' it's just a fake antivirus. Mac Defender (and it's aliases) is the first widespread fake antivirus to hit naive Mac users (i.e. amateur users) compared to 100s if not 1000s of Windows malware programs. The fact is that to remove this malware all you have to do is kill the process and drag it into the Trash Can unlike the Windows malware that disables the real antivirus and firewall, and hooks into the registry. You need an anti spyware utlity and a real antivirus to clear a lot of that - I've even come across some nasty Windows fake AV rootkits too. So Mac OS is still a far more stable and secure OS than Windows will ever be. Jog on, kitties!

Nothing to see here - Move Along

Just thinking about what-might-have-beens..... I am/was part of the small gathering of people (guessing ten plus/minus five lol) that wanted OS/2 Warp to succeed in a big way(IBM fail), more or less forced on to Windows (no real alternative at the time with x86 hardware), flirted for a while with Solaris/Solarisx86 (pizza boxen anyone?), migrated to SUSE Linux (German fail- sold out to Novell, who sold out/died). and ended up with Windows again instead of MacOS ($$- maco's is/was funner to say than OSX btw).

OS/2 Warp sure was sexy.... and it would have the exact same issue as Windows/OSX/Linux/Unix has - an I/O disconnect between the keyboard and the chair. No amount of security can overcome the inalienable right of your average human being to do something stupid - Rule #357b, attachment #47c, addendum #7, ref: GIGO..

:)

Why the big deal with this folks?

It's not a big deal to kill this thing, simply kill the task in Activity Monitor, remove it from the applications folder and then remove it from your run on startup list in your account profiles.

It's not even trying to hide or do anything sneaky like windows based rootkits do it's just that the Mac has become popular enough to warrant the same lame scareware attention PC's did back in the late 90's. In fact I find cleaning the infected Macs a heck of a lot easier than any PC. Lot of media hype and frenzy over nothing.

Dear oh dear oh dear....

I was going to say I don't give a rats arse what platform you use, but it would be a lie... I don't like apple. But that does not take anything away from what's actually gone on here....

The first thing is that ANY operating system is only as secure as the person holding the admin account password.

Right that over and done with, you can argue all day over the title of the app, call it a virus or a trojan, call it what you like its an application that does other than what is described when you downloaded it, so you want rid of it....

Getting rid of it appears to be as simple as killing the process and dragging it to the recycle bin. So what is the big deal in Apple telling its users, "oh dear, you have been tricked into downloading something that (at the moment) is no use to you. just kill the process and drag it to the recycle bin and your all good to go." ITS JUST BAD CUSTOMER SUPPORT NOT TOO.

Apple cannot be viewed in any other light than a really bad one for issuing memos to staff to nether confirm or deny the "malware" exists on apple systems. For a lot of companies this sort of thing could be the end of them, but because in the "fanboi" base apple have, they can do no wrong and will only have lost a few possible customers because of this.

The thing that gets me is that as far as apple having no virus or Trojans, its the beginning of the end. To me this stinks of a recon mission. they have spent very little money on this like the fact that the web page looks more like a windows GUI than a apple one, the fact that the installed code does very little other than pop up a few porn sites. To me its just been a exercise in "lets see if the apple crowd will actually fall for this sort of attack" and the answer is a massive YES !!!!

over the next few months expect a lot more of this type of attack and they will become more and more sophisticated in the look and feel. Then the actual payload will start to get more sophisticated and harder to remove. Apple better be working on a anti-virus/malware removal app or they will have an almighty fall heading their way....

Head in sand Icon please..

bwahaha

bit irresponsible of them no? not suprised rly.. boooo to crapple!

anonymous coward because there are far too many of them out there...