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Apple No Longer Secure Through Obscurity
David Utter
Staff Writer
2006-05-01
 Insider Reports RSS Feed
A scary story about a Mac OS X virus began making the rounds today, started by AP and carried on CNN, but as with many stories in the mainstream media, things may not be all they seem to be.
"Viruses catch up to the Mac," blares the headline on CNN's website. A web surfer clicked a bunch of links that promised him a peek at the tightly guarded Leopard release of OS X. Those links instead unleashed a virus on his system.
Or so the story goes. The Unofficial Apple Weblog noted several bits regarding "the rest of the story." First, the Mac virus is really a Trojan program. Then, they observed their original report on the Trojan, dubbed Oompa-Loompa, in February.
There's also a handy link to security firm Sophos and their assessment of the "virus," which they officially call OSX/Leap-A: "The worm attempts to spread via the iChat instant messaging system, sending itself to available contacts on the infected users' buddy list in a file called latestpics.tgz."
Paul Thurrott posted an entertaining deconstruction of part of the CNN-published story:
CNN - Apple's iconic status, growing market share and adoption of the same microprocessors used in machines running Windows are making Macs a bigger target, some experts warn.
Yikes. Two mistakes in one sentence.
If Mac OS X malware attacks are indeed on the rise, it's because of Apple's iconic status, and nothing else. That's because Apple is not growing its market share at all. Furthermore, the move to Intel processors doesn't make OS X any more or less secure than it was on the Power PC. Mac OS X on Intel still uses the same security features. It's a straight port. Anyone who would write such a thing doesn't understand operating systems at all.
This isn't to say Mac users should be unconcerned about security. The Secunia security advisory site reports several unpatched flaws in OS X. Apple said in the CNN report it would patch those flaws with the next automatic update to the operating system.
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Tag: Apple
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About the Author:
David Utter is a business and technology writer for SecurityProNews and WebProNews.
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