"The installation, in fact, depends on a long series of catastrophic failures of judgment by the user."

In other words, John, only true dumbasses will be caught by this. (We can tell you worked for NASA. )

"Intego suggested that one way to protect against this is to buy their VirusBarrier X4."

Of course, they would. Why else would they bother making such a big deal about a Trojan Horse that will affect only a few people? It's about the only way they can get people to buy their Mac products. Throwing a bit of FUD at the user works for Intego as well as for Bush & Co.

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gslusher wrote:
"The installation, in fact, depends on a long series of catastrophic failures of judgment by the user."

In other words, John, only true dumbasses will be caught by this. (We can tell you worked for NASA. )

"Intego suggested that one way to protect against this is to buy their VirusBarrier X4."

Of course, they would. Why else would they bother making such a big deal about a Trojan Horse that will affect only a few people? It's about the only way they can get people to buy their Mac products. Throwing a bit of FUD at the user works for Intego as well as for Bush & Co.

I'm against FUD, but this is not it. People can be tricked into installing this because they want the end result (free porn). When people are in this mindset, they'll click through anything and put their password in as well if they believe that it is necessary.
This is a good chance to point out what can be done by unscrupulous websites. No, you don't have to run out and by Antivirus (yet... maybe someday, though). But you do have to practice safe computing.
It is also important to note that you don't need your password to create problems. If someone wanted to, they could write a simple program that would just delete all of your (user) files. You don't need a password for that. Be careful where you surf, and be sure to follow the tip on disabling "Open safe files after downloading".

I actually posted this report in the TMO Forums yesterday (http://www.macobserver.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=59662). I did not see any credit or thanks for the tip in the story. In fact, I was surprised that TMO did not have the report before I found it on Yahoo.

~aviduser

>I actually posted this report in the TMO Forums yesterday. I >did not see any credit or thanks for the tip. In fact, I was >surprise that TMO did not have the report before I found it on >Yahoo.

Maybe they didn't want to out you as a rabid porn surfer AvidUser

A Trojan Horse gets its name because it rides on teh back of something want to install on your computer. In this case it is a "codec." So anyone who visited a website that offered the software to install that codec and then followed all of those steps would get infected. Many Windows viruses are not worms (self replicating)... they spread by good ol' social engineering.

You know eventually things become automatic for a lot of people. That is why many bash Vista's user account control - not so much for its "in your face" process, but the fact that eventually you'll just click through those prompts as second nature. If Joe the Mac user wants this "codec" to view his p0rn, he will just fill in his password just like any other software installation procedure.

Even if this trojan ends up a dud, it shows one thing... the Mac is starting to get the attention of the virus writers.

people need to be more careful. the operating system does everything it possibly can to warn you, the worst thing that can happen to the users is that they don't learn from the experience.

natural selection.

I received the Intego press release yesterday, but didn't have time to write it up before 5 PM ET. I wasn't in the forums last night, so I didn't see the link by aviduser.

I recommend that readers with hot tips (and typo alerts) contact me directly,
marty@macobserver.com I live in my e-mail!

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j.martellaro wrote:
I received the Intego press release yesterday, but didn't have time to write it up before 5 PM ET. I wasn't in the forums last night, so I didn't see the link by aviduser.

I recommend that readers with hot tips (and typo alerts) contact me directly,
marty@macobserver.com I live in my e-mail!

Maybe a Tip link on the TMO homepage.

BTW, no hard feelings. Just want to make sure my favorite mac site has all the important news FIRST.

~avid

Hi all,

Humor me on this one. If OS/X is developed in UNIX and UNIX is security-laden language and thus, impossible or impervious to writing viruses in, just how did this Trojan Horse come about?

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gulmatan wrote:
Hi all,

Humor me on this one. If OS/X is developed in UNIX and UNIX is security-laden language and thus, impossible or impervious to writing viruses in, just how did this Trojan Horse come about?

A Trojan Horse is NOT a "virus" nor a "worm." It is an application that is purported to do one thing but does something else, instead. If you read the linked article, you'll see just what it does. Trojan Horses can be written for ANY OS, regardless of how "secure" the OS is, as they are real applications. Trojan Horses do not replicate nor propagate on their own: they require that the user do something. In this case, the user has to do several things that are generally ill-advised. Trojan Horses involve "social engineering," exploiting weakness and vulnerability of people (gullibility, credulity, ignorance, stupidity), rather than vulnerabilities in software.

Webopedia has a good article explaining Trojan Horses, viruses, and worms.