Virus Articles on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog

DevilRobber now "improved", still nasty malware threat

by Kelly Guimont (Nov 18th, 2011)

We previously told you about DevilRobber and what sort of unsavory things it can do to (and with) your Mac. (In case you don't click over to read the article, here's the scoop: it's bad. Real bad.) Back in the day (November 1st), it was a Trojan horse and sent a little of your personal info ...

F-Secure reports Mac trojan poses as PDF

by Mike Schramm (Sep 23rd, 2011)

Security firm F-Secure has unearthed a troubling trojan for Macs that hides itself as a PDF, only waiting until the file is opened up and displaying some Chinese characters before it dives into your Mac's hard drive and sets up a backdoor control. Currently, according to F-Secure, the backdoor ...

Russian raid suggests tie between MacDefender and ChronoPay

by Chris Rawson (Aug 5th, 2011)

When the MacDefender malware made the rounds a few months ago, it sparked a frenzy of pundits claiming OS X's free ride in the malware scene was over (and as our research shows, they were wrong. Again). At the same time, we all wondered who was behind MacDefender in the first place. After a ...

Malware, Macs, and crying wolf: Doing the math

by Richard Gaywood (May 14th, 2011)

Love Apple gear? Like math? TUAW's Doing the Math series examines the numbers and the science that lie behind the hardware. The contentious subject of Mac security has been back in the news in recent weeks following the emergence of a fake antivirus package called MacDefender (also known as ...

McAfee predicts Apple under threat in 2011 (again)

by Mike Schramm (Dec 28th, 2010)

It happens around this time every year -- some company that makes its money from security computers claims that next year will finally be the year the Mac goes under attack from virus programmers. This year it's McAfee, who are claiming in a report that due to the popularity of iOS devices, Apple ...

Sophos releases free Mac anti-virus package

by Richard Gaywood (Nov 2nd, 2010)

Security company Sophos has today released a free Home Edition of its Mac virus scanner suite. This is a timely move by Sophos to get an early foothold in what could become a significant market for aftermarket OS X security tools. While it's true that Macs have, until now, enjoyed a relatively ...

New jailbroken iPhone worm is malicious

by Dave Caolo (Nov 23rd, 2009)

Last month a Dutch iPhone user demonstrated how careless jailbreaking can cause trouble. Namely, after finding users who enabled SSH with the phone's default password intact, he sent those phones a message that read, "Your iPhone's been hacked because it's really insecure! Please visit ...

Cisco adds Security Intelligence Ops to iPhone portfolio

by Michael Rose (Nov 21st, 2009)

Despite some security-conscious enterprise experts pointing accusatory fingers at the rather bleak encryption story and only-recently fixed ActiveSync policy compliance on the iPhone platform, there's no doubt that IT and network professionals are grooving on the iPhone -- there are many apps ...

Ask TUAW: Auto-tagging music, iPhone VoIP apps, replacing a hard drive and more

by Mat Lu (Nov 11th, 2009)

Welcome back to Ask TUAW, our weekly troubleshooting Q&A column. This week we've got questions about VOIP apps on the iPhone, auto-tagging music, Boot Camp, replacing a hard drive and more. As always, your suggestions and questions are welcome. Leave your questions for next week in the comments ...

Better safe than sorry? Trend Micro Smart Surfing for Mac

by Steven Sande (Apr 25th, 2009)

Earlier this week, PC security app vendor Trend Micro announced a new product aimed at Mac users. Smart Surfing for Mac (US$69.95 per user per year) provides antivirus, anti-spyware, anti-rootkit, and web threat protection, and also has a two-way firewall built in. This, of course, brings up the ...

Intego: Adobe CS4 crack app has variant of iServices trojan

by Robert Palmer (Jan 26th, 2009)

The folks over at Intego let the world know about a new trojan making the rounds along with copies of an application designed to crack Adobe Creative Suite 4. They consider the risk "serious." If you don't download software using peer-to-peer tools like BitTorrent, then you're perfectly safe. You ...

The Mac virus that isn't

by Brett Terpstra (Mar 10th, 2008)

We at TUAW have a pretty healthy collective sense of humor. Bearing that in mind, we'd like to take a moment and address the recent attention to the "Newton Virus," a playful piece of software with an unfortunate moniker. The "virus" was created – and named – by Troika, a ...

NPR on Mac hacking-- a little FUD, a little fact

by Mike Schramm (Dec 18th, 2007)

NPR hits up the issue of Mac hacking (the bad malware kind, not the good kind), and suggests that Macs are supposedly becoming a bigger target for exploitative folk. While this is a topic that could easily (and does often) degenerate into complete misinformation and FUD, NPR basically acknowledges ...

Bogus iPod Virus

by Erica Sadun (Apr 6th, 2007)

So there's this company, Kaspersky, and they say they've discovered the first iPod virus[1]. Oh dear! Everyone panic, alarums and excursions, and all that, right? Not. This is about Podloso a proof-of-concept virus that infects iPods (rather than using iPods as a distribution mechanism). And it goes ...

Does QuickTime pose a security risk?

by Erica Sadun (Dec 13th, 2006)

The whole QuickTime/MySpace security hole that was discussed this week on TUAW has given rise to a general concern about QuickTime's vulnerabilities. The QuickTime bug apparently allowed a worm to infect MySpace user profiles and redirected traffic to a phishing site, where passwords were ...