In what I hope to be my last piece on this Mac “Trojan” horse issue, I’d like to settle the score. The Mac community has jumped on this issue with intellect and quickness and have showed, as I did, that this appears to be nothing more than a media grab for Intego, which seems to have worked. For that, Intego gets 10 points. The Mac community gets 1000 for being quick to analyze and criticize this company.
In the FAQ posted by Intego, they claim to be “Macintosh Security experts” who, as their FAQ stated, “We protect your world.” Ok, let’s think about this for a second.
You are a Macintosh user, who wants a safe computer. We all do. So along comes Intego, who reports about this trojan, which is nothing more than a proof of concept, but they want you to be safe because they are the “experts” for “more than 6 years” in the Macintosh security business.
Alright. So reading further in the FAQ, they noted that they were told about this “Trojan” on “April 6, 2004 at 11:16 am” Folks, this trojan is nothing more than a Macintosh application with a geeky way to hide the virus code. This company, who has been around for so long, whom are experts, had to have someone tell them this could be done before they did anything about it?
Is that the kind of “expert” you want developing your security software? Not me.
Yes, this “trick” can be used to trick you into running a trojan that erases your files. This “trick” has been around since the dawn of Macintosh and is nothing new.
Intego would not be getting so much flak if they had just released a version of their software that helps block these kinds of tricks. That would have been cool. But instead they chose to prey on the unsuspecting Mac user, the Mac user who has been told to not worry about viruses and trojan horses, the Mac user who really doesn’t care about how computers work, the Mac user who just wants to use their Mac. They preyed on Mac user’s fears and concerns for their Macintosh as a way to drum up business for their Virus protection software.
Ya know, Intego says this is not the case, but just look at their press release, look at the articles I and others have written about how this is not a new issue, and draw your own conclusions.
I want Mac developers who treat me with respect, not like a fool.
Other articles
- MacMerc – Intego puts the ‘con’ in the MP3Concept trojan
- Wired – OS X Trojan Horse is a nag
- Boing Boing – First Malware for OS X?
- More details on Trojan Horse for Mac OS X – Go Dave, who came up with the same idea as me – “The only way for Apple to “fix” this would be to universally visually identify executable applications in some fashion.”
- Ars: Immediacy of Mac OS X Trojan horse threat exaggerated