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Mac users' Invite to the Botnet party

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I spent the holiday weekend with my extended family and that means at least two things: bedeviling local wait staffs with our over-large group and hours spent cleaning and updating siblings' and nephews' Windows machines. Without being dismissive of the virus threat, my expectation is that list won't also soon include Mac cleanups: The Flashback malware is real, is hitting Macs hard, and - with hope - changes the way we act about security, but some perspective is in order:

I spent hours* running Windows Update, removing browser toolbars people swear they didn't install, and doing multiple virus scans. And rebooting -- lots and lots of rebooting. I spent less than 20 minutes checking my Macbook Pro and my wife's Air to determine we were unaffected by Flashback. A chunk of that time was spent waiting for instructional pages to load using our hotel's WiFi. Now that we're back home, I'm going to have my 10-year old daughter check out the kids' iMac. I'll report back in the comments.

* - non-contiguous: this was time spent between inappropriately-overheated political discussions, general smack-talking especially re non-present family members, and burger-flipping duties

Plenty has be reported already. This includes detection and cleanup procedures as well as general gleefulness re the live exploit from the non-Mac crowd. The virus -- a drive-by that will attempt to infect suceptible machines just by virtue of visiting a site with the malware running on it; no explicit download required! -- is fairly particular: If it sees you've got certain antivirus (yes: they exist and are available gratis in at least two cases) or coding tools installed, it self destructs before further attempts to insinuate itself into your system. It's good to be vigilant and / or a coder.

The vulnerability is in Java, but had been patched months ago by Java's stewards (now Oracle). If there's still a Mac-user contingent feeling impervious, this would be a good time to get more vigilant or take up coding. If this is also what it takes to get Apple to up its security game, it's been a relatively painless infection to kick it off - click fraud sucks, but it's preferable to sending your banking credentials to Ukraine or working to infect all your Facebook friends.

Apple's got plenty of folks with ideas re putting its cash to work. Here are some additional ones specifically regarding taking security seriously:

  • Throw some money, attention an ink at the GPL'd ClamAV. They've been at it for awhile and the developers and community will appreciate the good will. Include the developer of the Mac-specific version, too.
  • Buy some media and run a conference or two to show how serious they are about educating the expanding user base re the dangers of viruses, malware and trojans. Explain in those communications the depth of investment in Mac security.
  • Create a Mechanical Turk-ready script and have a real person contact every affected Flashback user to walk them through the detection and removal of it, run Software Update and add ClamXav.

Pursuing all of these would be less than a P&L rounding error while showing how seriously the growing malware threat is being taken in Cupertino. If Apple plans to keep doubling the size of Mac marketshare every few years, the target for script kiddies and serious criminals alike will continue to become more tempting.