Silicon Shecky

Apple finally admits to the MacDefender scareware and puts out instructions on how to prevent it. Too bad that within a couple of days there was a new variant that makes the instructions obsolete.

Ed Bott continues to report on this on his Microsoft Blog over on ZDNet, and to much hatred from the Mac Fanbois. They still deny the whole thing. It does not matter that Apple has confirmed the malware. It does not matter that Intego, a Mac Security blog is the one finding these items. No, the Mac is uber-secure and there is no malware for it. Malware for the Mac is impossible to create. Well, the new version reported by Intego doesn’t require any administrator password. This to me seems to be no longer any proof of concept, but a real threat. But I digress. The biggest problem in this situation are the Mac Fanbois who are denying this sort of malware exists. The whole argument they give though reminds me of something else in history, that happened almost 100 years ago.

There was a ship built in the early 20th century in England, which was highly lauded. This ship was huge, luxurious and was unsinkable. That is correct, the claimed nothing could sink this ship, no way, no how, don’t even ponder the notion, it can’t happen. Well, there is nothing wrong with calling something unsinkable, of course until it met a friendly iceberg in the North Atlantic on April 15, 1912. The iceberg decided to give the ship a nice bump, tore open a huge gash, and caused a lot of people to perish as the ship sank. We all know the name of the ship, it lives on. Titanic.

I look at claims of the Titanic, and the blindness that the builders of it had, and see similarities to the reaction of Mac Fanbois to Ed Bott and the MacDefender malware. Denial, short sightedness, and unwilling to admit the problem. Actually, this also reminds me of Microsoft when it first started getting hit big time with malware.

There are many arguments in this whole scenario that can be taken in. Yes, its a socially engineered piece of malware, but so are the majority of ones written fro Microsoft. Yes one piece of malware like this does not an epidemic make. Yet, the Mac community has a chance to learn from the past, realized that they are starting to be targeted, and get ahead of the rolling stone that could be coming at them. Denial only hurts them.

Oh, and just one more piece of history on the whole, you need administrative privilege for the malware to become installed. Last time I checked, OSX was written on top of a BSD Unix variant. There have been viruses for Unix for a lot longer than Mac or Windows.

A person I know recently wrote a nice little blog piece about how Windows 7 is a Crossgrade. They made some really nice points, but missed the mark on a bunch of others.

First off, the statement that you do not “own” your copy of Windows is correct, this statement is also true of OSX. From the EULA for OSX, “The software (including Boot ROM code), documentation and any fonts accompanying this License whether on disk, in read only memory, on any other media or in any other form (collectively the “Apple Software”) are licensed, not sold, to you by Apple Computer, Inc.” This is why its called Licensing, and while even the GNU Public License allows one to modify the source code, there are still restrictions as to what you need to do for distribution otherwise you have broken the agreement. This is not inductive of owning the software itself.

The next thing is about viruses. I do not deny that Windows has more Malware made for it than any other Operating System, but in this case its about security through obscurity. The people who are writing the majority of viruses now seem to be doing it for money, a way to get personal information and sell it. The best and easiest way to do this efficiently is to target the weakest link, which would wind up being the end user. The majority of end user machines run Windows software. Now to be a bit more fair, Apple has finally started recommending that its users get some sort of anti-malware protection. As a matter of fact there was an OSX Botnet that was found to be active last year. Heck even Linux has a botnet which winds up distributing Windows Malware. So much for that argument.

Apple did a great thing with the $30 upgrade to Snow Leopard, and yes it has Windows beat on the price point there. Microsoft did have some good short term deals when Windows 7 came out such as special student pricing and family packs, but it does cost a bit more to go to Windows 7, and in the long run for an everyday user, it would be more efficient to get a new machine. Of course last year there were a number of companies that would send you Windows 7 for free if you bought a computer from them, a free upgrade from Vista.

Finally, is Windows 7 perfect. No it is not perfect, but it is better than prior versions, and is a step in the right direction. Nobody gets it 100% correct (Snow Leopard shiped with an old version of Flash with a major flaw), but they try. Honestly Microsoft’s OS is closer to Linux than Apple’s in my opinion, considering how much more guarded Apple is about allowing people develop for it. Speaking of Linux, I do use Ubuntu, and I love it. I would love to see more people use it, but I know that comes with some risks and more chance for it to become scrutinized more. I look at Firefox and see what could happen to Linux if it became more mainstream. Linux, I feel,  first needs to become more homogeneous so people don’t have to worry about what flavor of Linux they get.

There are pluses and minuses to every OS out there, and not everyone is going to agree on everything, but at least look at things logically and thoroughly first.

Mac Vs. Windows. The age long battle, has been fought in advertising, on store shelves, and amongst computer users for a long time now. The arguments we can all say from memorys. Windows has more software, more hardware offerings, are less expensive, are more prevalant. Mac’s are more stable, produce better graphics, are more secure. Not anymore. Mac users have officially lost the right to say more secure. They no longer can claim that they can’t be hacked, and they definitely need to start looking into anti-virus solutions.

There are tons of articles floating around the net right now about the iBotnet, the unfortuante result of installing pirated copies of  iWork09. Yes I know, not everyone installs pirated software. Not everyone even knows how to get pirated software. That is not the point.

The point being that Mac’s have been so “secure” because noone felt they were worth writing malware for. With the growing popularity and large visibility Apple has been getting lately, its no surprise that something like this has happened. Yes this one might only affect a very small ammount of people, but now that proof of concept has been delivered, and now that one piece of malware has been made and put into the wild, the real question is how long until the copy cats start?

Look at the world of Windows malware, and you will find so much of it is variants. People download the original code, and modify it, making it meaner, nastier, more eveasive, easier to distribute. Do you really think that won’t happen with Mac malware? Are you that naive?

I’m a PC user. I have my Windows machines, and my Linux boxes. I’d love to have a Mac so I can learn it inside out. I don’t see any problem with Mac except that it is too expensive for my tastes. Well, now that you really should get AV for it, and like any other real software for Mac it costs because access to the APIs are all controlled by Apple and they charge a lot for that sort of access, it will cost more, plus that OSX is built on a *nix (Unix/Linux) system, well I guess I’ll wait longer.

Welcome to the real world my Mac friends.