Malware on the Mac

Ars Technica is a well respected site that happens to have published a great article on Mac Malware. Discussed at length at the recent User Group meeting, I thought it appropriate to publish a link to this article for those that are interested and want to follow through. A quick synopses of their conclusion – but I highly recommend the full article – and the link to the TUAW article as well.

So what do you do if you find yourself with a variation of MAC Defender on your machine? TUAW recently posted a complete guide to protecting yourself, but the general gist is this: uncheck “open safe files after downloading” in your Safari preferences so that apps that are downloaded automatically through something like a crafty Google Image search don’t just pop right up and start running.

If something that looks suspicious does pop up and you haven’t installed it yet, delete the app immediately. If you have installed it, you may need to start killing some processes in order to get it out of your life, but as long as you don’t enter any credit card info, you’re not likely to get scammed any further by MAC Defender. For now, that is.

In addition, a quick reminder of the link to Sophos, who provide Malware software. This is the software that Rick discussed at the meeting.

I personally have no experience of it, but the company is well reported on the bulletin boards, and discussed alongside of solutions like Norton (part of Symantec), McAfee and Kaspersky

Full Article :: Malware on the Mac: is there cause for concern? Ars investigates

Passed on – with thanks to :: Ars Technica