Hugo Heriz-Smith

Steve Jobs biography to ship on October 24th.

hugo — Fri, 21 Oct 2011 19:11:06 +0000

I’m looking forward to reading it.

Mac Trojan pretends to be Flash Installer

admin — Tue, 27 Sep 2011 15:40:23 +0000

There’s a new trojan aimed at Mac users. There’s more here at Apple Insider. It’s a good idea to uncheck “Open safe files after downloading” in Safari’s preferences.

Island Trip

hugo — Sat, 09 Jul 2011 00:03:49 +0000

On the fourth our friends took us out to a beautiful island. It was very foggy and the sun occasionally came through from above.

I wonder when the next call will be…

hugo — Thu, 02 Jun 2011 08:04:12 +0000

From AppleInsider, I see that the MacDefender people have responded to Apple’s security update from earlier in the week.

Apple release anti-malware update…

admin — Wed, 01 Jun 2011 02:02:57 +0000

Here’s a story in Macworld about the update. After getting two or three more calls from clients with this “Mac Defender” junk, it will be interesting to see what happens next. For anyone using OS X, running software update would … Continue reading →

More on Mac Malware

admin — Thu, 26 May 2011 12:03:53 +0000

Via John Gruber a good piece at Macworld concerning the recent malware attacks on Mac OS X.

New variant of Mac Defender malware on OS X doesn’t require password to install

admin — Thu, 26 May 2011 10:50:44 +0000

I haven’t had any more calls about this since I last posted. Hopefully this won’t change with this new development.

http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/11/05/25/latest_mac_defender_malware_attacks_mac_os_x_without_password.html

Apple release article on removing MacDefender

admin — Wed, 25 May 2011 01:06:24 +0000

Apple release Knowledge Base article on Mac malware…

More calls due to MacProtector/MacDefender

admin — Thu, 19 May 2011 18:13:12 +0000

I’ve now had three clients call with this malware installed. Short article here at AppleInsider about this too

Macintosh Malware Alert

admin — Tue, 03 May 2011 11:33:16 +0000

Yesterday, for the first time, I got a call from a client with a malware infection on a Macintosh. Within a few minutes of helping them remove it, a friend emailed me a link to this story on Apple Insider.

The gist of what happens is that after viewing a page with JavaScript code, a .ZIP file is downloaded to your computer. If you have “Open ‘safe files’ after downloading” checked in your Safari preferences, the file will automatically open and the installer will run. Some users are even reporting that the installation doesn’t even ask for a password, but I’m not sure about this.

To protect yourself from this sort of attack, do the following:

1. Open Safari

2. Go to Preferences (under the Safari menu)

3. Go to the General Tab

4. At the bottom, uncheck “Open ‘safe files’ after downloading”

5. Close Preferences.

It would also be a good idea to have two accounts on your computer – one set as Administrator to use when installing software, etc. and another, your day to day account, set as a Standard user. I realize that hardly anyone uses this setup and that it can be a bit of a nuisance – but this may become necessary if when exploits like this become more common.