Get the $1 iPhones instead.
Posted on 12/05/2007 9:45:20 PM PST by webschooner
SAN FRANCISCO - Apple products, including the Mac and the iPhone, are increasingly being targeted by computer hackers according to new research, shattering years of relative safety for the Apple camp.
This year has proven to be a banner year for the Cupertino, Calif.-based electronics maker. Apple's hardware have sold more than any other year, but the larger user base makes it increasingly more enticing for hackers with malicious intent.
Apple sold 2.1m Macs in the third quarter, up from 1.1m in the first quarter of 2006, according to Gartner, the research group.
"Mac's market share is now significant enough for parasites to target," security firm F-Secure said, noting that "malware gangs don't make an effort to develop something without the promise of a profitable return."
The company said the rise in attacks against Apple appeared to be the work of a single gang of professional hackers known in underground networks as the "Zlob gang." The crew makes spyware that often claims to be a needed "video codec" to view copy-protected media.
The rising security threat could present a challenge to Apple, which has long touted the security advantages of its platform over rivals. Apple declined to discuss specific steps it was taking to counter the growing number of attacks.
The Zlob gang relies on tricking users to download and install their malicious software. Once installed, Zlob variants typically show fake error messages designed to convince the computer user into installing and buying rogue antispyware products.
Other malware from the group also include a DNSChanger, which silently reconfigure the computer's DNS server settings.
DNS servers are responsible for converting people friendly text URLs into computer friendly numeric IP addresses. Once the DNS settings are changed to their servers the Zlob gang is in control of the Web browser's destination.
The iPhone, which ha s sold over 1.4 million iPhones to date, is also a target, the company said.
"[The iPhone] uses a version of Mac OSX, which is in turn based on Unix," F-Secure said. If you understand Unix security, then you can relatively easily 'port' your knowledge and understanding to the iPhone."
News of Apple's growing attacks comes as the number of viruses and other malware has doubled over the past year.
F-Secure had detected 500,000 viruses, trojans and worms in 2007, compared with 250,000 last year.
Tech ping material?
Just wanted to drop in and say “hah hah”.
Get the $1 iPhones instead.
“relies on tricking users to download and install their malicious software”
To install and run an application still requires admin privledges and ok-ing a message about the app, along with the admin password.
This is different than viruses/malware that hit by opening an email or a website - or worms that spread through the network without any user action required.
So, as far as I know, there’s still an order of magnitude better security. And I don’t know what will ever secure the system from a user who installs unknown software on their system.
HF
Yup. So far everything I've seen requires the active participation of the user. Unless you remove the ability for users to install software or save files, (thus rendering the computer largely non-functional), you can't guard against such things.
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That's also true of windows malware. The biggest difference is that there have been few sophisticated psychological attacks on Apple users.
That’s because it’s a fake Chinese joke. The “iPhones” term there wasn’t referring to the cellular phone made by Apple. It was instead referring to the fake earphones.
Actually, that's not true. While some virus/trojans have required some action by a user, others most definitely have not.
From what I understand, the average lifespan of an unprotected (i.e., sans firewall) windows box on the internet is a matter of seconds, and that's with no user intervention at all. To my knowledge, there are no such attacks for Macs in the wild.
AmP
I'm not sure this is correct. I know it's true for many, however I know there are worms that don't require user action at all, and I believe opening some files will infect the computer. Opening a file is a user action, however on the Mac for it to run, it's identified as an and the user has to take further action to allow the app to run - approval and admin password. I think in Windows with the browser integration and OS scripting integrated into applications, you have a bigger vulnerability. So far anyway.
Run new software, yes; save files, no. What you can do is set up an admin and user account and make the user account the default. The user can then do everything basic except run new apps.
They cannot install new OS updates and this can be seen as either a positive or negative. It would then require an admin to administer new OS updates.
Sorry, I just realized I linked to a non-censored version of that pic in #8. Please kill.
Doesn’t matter. Unlike Linux users many Mac users are rocks, sucked in by the interface.
Saying that these people won’t participate in killing their machine by not opening Jessica Simpson porn email is giving them way too much credit.
Many PC users are rocks without an interfact to get sucked into.
If you have to be a techie to use a machine, it limits its value to the general public. And once you don’t have to be a techie... well, you got rocks.
Since Windows includes a firewall, on by default, that point is moot. Cable and DSL modems also act as firewalls.
I point out that I maintain about 50 Windows machines, none of which have been compromised in the last five years. The only non-free security program is AVG, which costs about 10 dollars per workstation per year.
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