Been following the onslaught of Mac users infecting themselves with the Mac Defender/Mac Security scareware/trojan? The weaker members of the Mac herd (which probably comprises only about 90% of the herd *heh*) are the only ones susceptible to the social engineering ploy leading them to self-infect. *sheesh* OSX even uses the same sort of “superuser” or administrator password authentication that almost all ‘nix OSes do, which means users who infect themselves have to intervene to allow the scareware/trojan to install itself. (Windows users have griped about this sort of security nagging only since Vista… but careless Windows users still circumvent it as well.)
Here’s info from a leaked internal Apple memo about the issue:
Read it and weep. Apple, the paragon of user friendliness and service, says to its users essentially, “Screw you.” Oh, the memo points to a “helpful” page on malware in the Apple docs archive:
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?path=Mac/10.6/en/27449
The sad thing is that the article at the link is a case of closing the barn door after the horse has fled, as it offers absolutely no help to someone who’s already infected themselves. Bupkis, zip, nada, a big zero with the rim kicked off. Oh, well. That’s Apple, eh?
If you do run into any of the 5% of computer users who use OSX who are among the subset that has infected themselves, just be kind to these weaker members of the herd, OK? 😉 I’ve had to practice being nice to self-infectors for years with Windows users, so I know full well what it’s like to bite my tongue when someone insists–contrafactually–that they did nothing to infect themselves. *heh*
Oh, and contrast Apple’s “Screw you” policy with Evil Microsoft’s policy:
The screencap shows only part of a fairly detailed article with more than a few FREE options for removal of malware. Apple, paragon of virtue: “Screw you,” to users. Evil Microsoft: “Here are some helpful, FREE avenues to take.”
Well, since no one else is commenting, here’s my comment on Ed Bott’s article over at ZDNet:
*heh*
Thanks for this David. I’m bookmarking it for future reference.
I, myself, haven’t had any virus/spyware/malware ever in the two years i’ve had this macbook, but you’re right, there are always stupid people. 🙂
PS…sorry i haven’t been around. Work stuff. Storm Stuff. Grandson stuff.
You know how it is.
Yeh, I know how it is, Mel. Oh, the followup to this Mac Malware story? Apple has finally published a means to deal with this particular malware (after th brouhaha stirred up by the linked articles and others) and… the malware authors have responded by releasing a version into the wild that bypasses all the Apple solution/prevention steps.