Sign in / up

back to article Google's elves work on Santa to rein(deer) in grinchware

Google's elves have been busy working on a toy for all the girls and boys who run Mac OS and worry about getting a virus. “Santa” is billed as “a binary whitelisting/blacklisting system for Mac OS X”, can be found on GitHub and “keeps track of binaries that are naughty and nice.” Nice binaries get to run. Naughty binaries get …

COMMENTS

Post your comment
House rules Send corrections
Add to 'My topics' unstar *
  1. Mikel

    Google uses a lot of Macs

    They have ever since all their Windows PCs in China got hacked through IE. No Windows at Google now, unless justified to the CIO - in person.

    No doubt they see no reason not to share their internal app signing and white listing system, for the good of all.

    3 0 Reply
    1. Mark 85
      Reply Icon

      Re: Google uses a lot of Macs

      There's several reasons to "share"... a) Self-defense? b) Maybe someone will pick up on the idea that MAC's need AV? c) They need a AV with a backdoor for monitoring activity?

      It would be nice if it could be ported to PC's although many PC users would probably just click "yes.. run the darn thing" anyway.

      0 0 Reply
      1. Anonymous Coward
        Reply Icon
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Google uses a lot of Macs

        although many PC users would probably just click "yes.. run the darn thing" anyway

        So would many Mac users. And many iOS users. And many Android users. People are dumb, something like this warning you only truly works well if you assume a technically competent user. Luckily, Google has that covered, at least amongst its engineers. Its ad sales division could still very easily be pwned by something nasty this had blacklisted, I'm sure!

        The "people are stupid" philosophy is why AV software ended up with a guilty until proven innocent model, where they make it a bit of a pain to remove something from quarantine. They assume if you aren't smart enough to figure how to do that, you also aren't smart enough to know if you should...

        2 0 Reply
  2. getHandle
    Pint

    ...the ciders behind the project...

    Freudian slip perhaps?

    1 0 Reply
    1. Robert Helpmann??
      Reply Icon
      Childcatcher

      Re: ...the ciders behind the project...

      I asked the author if he was buying when I sent a correction. It's worth a try...

      0 0 Reply
  3. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Not an official Google project, nor is it a version 1.0

    While I appreciate Google's effort, it will be labeled beta for years to come. Let's just hope they don't bin it for no reason at all.

    1 0 Reply

POST COMMENT House rules

Not a member of The Register? Create a new account here.

Forgotten password ?

  • Enter your comment

  • Add an icon

Anonymous cowards cannot choose their icon

Other stories you might like