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In case you missed it, your Mac may be under attack. Especially if you have a taste for downloading Mac software that isn’t exactly, ahem, legal.
Last week I reported that a trojan horse called “iWorkServices” has was found in a pirated version of iWork ‘09 floating around on BitTorrent. Yesterday it came to light that another trojan has been found in a pirated version of Photoshop CS4.
Whether you play fast and loose with your software licenses is on your conscience (I certainly don’t recommend it) but one way to keep tabs on software that likes to call home is with cialis wholesale Objective Development’s Little Snitch 2.0 ($29.95). I hadn’t used it since version 1 and the recent rash of Mac trojans gave me a prefect excuse to try v.2.
Little Snitch informs you whenever a program attempts to establish an outgoing Internet connection. You can then choose to allow or deny this connection, or define a rule how to handle similar, future connection attempts. This reliably prevents private data from being sent out without your knowledge. Little Snitch runs inconspicuously in the background and it can also detect network related activity of viruses, trojans and other malware.
Once installed you’ll be amazed at all the things on your Mac that connect to the Internet in the background. Most of them probably have your approval, like all the apps that you allowed to “check for updates at startup?” and things like Software Update, dotmacsyncclient and Bonjour’s mDNSresponder. Those ones are safe to “allow” but if Little Snitch asks for approval for something unknown, deny the request then Google the name to see if it’s kosher.
Be warned though, the first time you install Little Snitch, you’ll be inundated with allow/deny requests and it can be exhaustive. (Hint: you can confirm an alert with Command-Return, Control-Return and Return-Escape). Clicking the Forever button helps you ignore approved outbound connections and it’s a small price to pay to be able to keep tabs on potentially malicious code.
A new Network Monitor feature (pictured) has been added in version 2 which alone is worth the price of admission. The beautifully designed window displays detailed information about all of the incoming and outgoing network traffic on your Mac. It only pops up when connections are active unless you check the small “stay visible” box at the top of the window. I find myself leaving the Network Monitor window visible and watching in awe as the packets flow by. If you decide to close it a subtle menu bar item will also keep you apprised.
Nice, tight bit of code. Highly recommended.
The previous version was called the iWorkServices Trojan Removal Tool, and SecureMac changed the program’s name to the iServices Trojan Removal Tool. The company said the updated tool is also a free download and detects and removes the new variant trojan found on pirated versions of Adobe Photoshop CS 4 for Mac OS X.
This trojan is working its way around various P2P networks and with various packages as the vector for infections. The first version was discovered in copies of iWork 09, which was introduced at Macworld Expo earlier this month.
According to MacScan:
Like its predecessor, variant B obtains root privileges, and notifies the remote host of the infected computer’s location on the Internet. It is recommended users avoid downloading pirated copies of these programs. What’s more, it is anticipated that new variants will be discovered in the coming months in other software cialis weekend pill packages distributed by third parties over the Internet.
This past week a trojan claiming to be the latest iWork release was spotted on file sharing networks. Shortly thereafter, a similar trojan was sighted that masquerading as a crack for Photoshop CS4. Both events are making some people question whether or not the Mac’s long tenure as being a malware-free system is coming to a close and to face facts and install AV software.
The short answer is if you are a relatively well-behaved computer user, probably not. Mac malware is not endemic amongst the general population due to these events. The trojans of the past week is not self-propagating beyond the high-risk population, namely file swappers, and is relatively easy to find, analyze, and remediate. This is in stark contrast to PC users who have been hit with the Downadup/Conficker worm, which propagates via three orthogonal vectors and includes one remote exploit, and actively prevents you from visiting websites that contain remediation tools.
I do think cialis vs generic cialis the relative halcyon days of malware-free Macs are coming to an end. Anyone who is currently infected by the new malware will remain infected without direct human interaction due to the lack of any automatic mechanism for the identification and removal of malware. That means there is a non-zero population of Mac users who are now compromised and will remain compromised unless they either clean their machine or they buy a new system. Sounds familiar, right?
The question I want answered is whether or not the monetization rate of compromised Macs is sufficient for the malware authors to continue to pursue the platform. If not, these events will be a blip on the radar; otherwise, Mac owners better keep their Time Machine backups up to date.
And McNealy will report just how large those benefits are.
It’s intuitively obvious open source is more cost effective and productive than proprietary software. Open source does not require you to pay a penny to Microsoft or IBM or Oracle or any proprietary vendor any money.
And he wants open source mandates.
The government ought to mandate open source products based on open source reference implementations to improve security, get higher quality software, lower costs, higher reliability – all the benefits that come with open software.
Coming from McNealy, the opinion is hardly a neutral analysis. Sun is a vigorous proposal of open source and Unix; cofounder Bill Joy was a primary author of BSD. During his tenure as CEO, McNealy’s hallmark was his constant attacks on Microsoft and Bill Gates.
In his inaugural speech, Obama said:
those of us who manage the public’s dollars will be held to account, to spend wisely, reform bad habits, and do our business in the light of day, because only then can we restore the vital trust between a people and their government.
The question is how much longer spending huge amounts of taxpayer money on proprietary solutions can be justified as “spending wisely” or something other than a “bad habit.”
Michael Tiemann, VP of RedHat and head of the Open Source Initiative, estimated the global waste in using proprietary software at more than $1 trillion annually.
This is the kind of change we need if we are ever going to see the government reform its operational capabilities and cost basis. If they fail to do this, it’s one more stick in the mud. The capital markets are telling us today we can no longer afford much more status quo.
At TruthOut, Dean Baker has called for a $2 billion investment to further development of open source for the desktop.
This money can be used to further develop and simplify open source operating systems such as Linux, as well other forms of free software. The payoffs from this spending would be enormous. Imagine that every computer buyer in the world would be able to get a computer for which the operating system was free, as was almost all the software that they would ever use.
This would surely save consumers an average of at least $200 per computer. With sales at close to 20 million a year, cialis usa the savings in the United States alone could easily exceed the cost of supporting software development. Adding in the benefits (and presumably some contributions) from the rest of the world, we will be way ahead by going the route of publicly funded open software.
I think Baker probably misses the ball on this one. I fully support expanded government funding of open source developments. But the real benefit is not in demolishing Microsoft’s market for Windows but in developing more and more robust database, cloud and distributed computing solutions. Cost savings for government and business would free up money to invest in R&D, expand into new markets and increase hiring.
