Half a million Mac computers 'infected with malware'

[Jazzmoose]

But Jim does make a valid point: the bad actors concentrate on the systems with the highest concentration of users.

I bought that idea twenty years ago, but if the red flag of "apple never gets hacked" wasn't enough to bring the hackers out in the last twenty years, I'm willing to admit that Apple must be doing something right...

[Christiern]

One important thing Apple has done right is to make superior products.

[AllenLowe]

I agree with Chris. And so what if my Mac has become my latest object of fetishization? I happily drink any Cool Aid it offers; I keep a shrine covered with dead goats in the corner, and the occasional virgin. I commune with Jobs on my Ouija Board. And we have talked about having a child together.

[JSngry]

You should barbeque those goats before they get rancid.

Barbequed goat is a delicacy among delicacies. If you're ever in a Mexican restaurant and see cabrito on the menu, order it, and keep ordering it.

[Christiern]

Allen, you're upsetting Jim! Oh well, gives him another opportunity to post for post-counter's sake.

[Pete C]

I bought that idea twenty years ago, but if the red flag of "apple never gets hacked" wasn't enough to bring the hackers out in the last twenty years, I'm willing to admit that Apple must be doing something right...

The "hackers" who create malware are, in general, not the "hobbyists" of old but bad actors who couldn't care less about the "challenge," they just want the best chance for results. I can assure you that if Mac OS had the same saturation as Windows you'd see a much higher rate of compromise.

[AllenLowe]

here's me and my Mac before it went on a diet:

Edited April 7, 2012 by AllenLowe

[JSngry]

here's me and my Mac before it went on a diet:

Now there's some shit that could stand to be hacked!

[Jazzmoose]

I bought that idea twenty years ago, but if the red flag of "apple never gets hacked" wasn't enough to bring the hackers out in the last twenty years, I'm willing to admit that Apple must be doing something right...

The "hackers" who create malware are, in general, not the "hobbyists" of old but bad actors who couldn't care less about the "challenge," they just want the best chance for results. I can assure you that if Mac OS had the same saturation as Windows you'd see a much higher rate of compromise.

Thanks. Another illusion shattered!

[robertoart]

here's me and my Mac before it went on a diet:

Just visiting. The toilet is a dead giveaway. Surely you'd need a customised one.

Edited April 8, 2012 by freelancer

[Christiern]

Blobby and his Windows machine has completed Jim's mission and destroyed this thread.

[Swinging Swede]

And here I thought that Macs couldn't get malware...

[Pete C]

“Last year’s attacks were a turning point — criminals realized they could make money targeting Apple users,” said Mr. Schouwenberg.”As Apple gains more market share, it will also see more attacks.”

Adam J. O’Donnell, a security architect at Sourcefire, a computer security firm, wrote a report in 2008 predicting that digital criminals would start targeting Mac users with Windows-style malware attacks once Apple’s share of the PC market reached 16 percent, assuming that Windows anti-virus solutions were at least 80 percent effective.

http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/04/06/widespread-computer-virus-indicates-mac-users-no-longer-safe

[JSngry]

The thing to remember is that, no matter what OS you run, online "security" is always gong to be a reactive game. Always.

[mjzee]

I've applied all the OSX system updates, and I'm still getting reminders to update Adobe Flash. Are these reminders now to be trusted?

[Pete C]

I've applied all the OSX system updates, and I'm still getting reminders to update Adobe Flash. Are these reminders now to be trusted?

I assume third-party software updates are separate from OS updates, just as with Windows.

[Shawn]

I've applied all the OSX system updates, and I'm still getting reminders to update Adobe Flash. Are these reminders now to be trusted?

I assume third-party software updates are separate from OS updates, just as with Windows.

Correct. Adobe updates have to be applied separately.

[mjzee]

I've applied all the OSX system updates, and I'm still getting reminders to update Adobe Flash. Are these reminders now to be trusted?

I assume third-party software updates are separate from OS updates, just as with Windows.

Correct. Adobe updates have to be applied separately.

But the virus was distributed by means of a corrupted Adobe Flash installer - it fooled the system into thinking it was an "official" Adobe update when it was anything but. The most recent OSX patch was to close this hole. If the official Apple patch didn't work, that would be really dismaying.

[Christiern]

I have to use Adobe Photoshop, but I hate that company. For one thing, they bought and killed FreeHand, to protect their Adobe Illustrator, which is vastly inferior, but also because I keep seeing an Adobe icon pop ul from my dock, telling me to update. There is no update.

They did give us Postscript fonts, however.