May 1

Mac securit....oh....no!

Benjamin Daines was browsing the Web when he clicked on a series of links that promised pictures of an unreleased update to his computer’s operating system.

Instead, a window opened on the screen and strange commands ran as if the machine was under the control of someone — or something — else.

“It just shows people that no matter what kind of computer you use you are still open to some level of attack,” said Daines, a 29-year-old British chemical engineer who once considered Macs invulnerable to such attacks.

Just like I have always thought. Everything is vulnerable. It just depends who is targeted the most.

Entire article here.

by drmthtr   May 1, 2006 9:04 AM   |

Comments

by Mike,   May 1, 2006 9:23 AM  

I'm sorry, but did this genius really think there was some super-secret update floating around out there? The most likely downloaded some file from "shadywebsite.com", opened the file, entered his password and then it installed some nasty payload on his system. If that is how it went down, and he is that stupid, then, frankly, he got was was coming to him.

by Deane,   May 1, 2006 9:26 AM  

Note to self: delete the file I downloaded from shadywebsite.com...

by Dave,   May 1, 2006 11:14 AM  

What do you want to bet that Daines' "infection" (if that's what it was) is a result of more than him just clicking "on a series of links" in his browser. MacFixIt.com is saying it was a Leap A worm that was likely installed via iChat, which required an admin password to be installed. CNN makes it sound like he was just innocently poking around, when in fact he created the problem for himself.

by ccs178,   May 1, 2006 3:36 PM  

There isn't any security that is safe from dumbasses.

by Dave,   May 3, 2006 11:40 PM  

Daring Fireball has a great post named Good Journalism that pokes holes in the above referenced article. Excellent points all.

Apple’s iconic status, growing market share and adoption of same microprocessors used in machines running Windows are making Macs a bigger target, some experts warn.

That’s quite an interesting theory — that the malware plaguing so many millions of PCs running Windows isn’t necessarily the result of problems with Windows itself, but is rather the result of something related to their Intel “microprocessors”.

I’ll bet that means all the other operating systems that run on Intel-compatible x86 processors, such as Linux and FreeBSD, are just as susceptible to malware as Windows.

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