Some days (like today) I get thoroughly annoyed with society’s continual states of denial. Yes, “states” plural. This BBC news story about the “first” Trojan Horse for the Mac is wrong in four important ways — and it perpetuates another “myth of denial”.
[T]he first serious threat to Mac users has been observed “in the wild”.
It’s a Trojan Horse, a piece of code that pretends to do one thing but actually compromises your computer.
This one spreads through online video sites…
That puts my son right in the middle of the vulnerable population because he likes to watch video clips via sites like YouTube and Flixster…
The Trojan sits behind an online video and when you try to play it you get a message from Quicktime telling you to get a new codec, and if you follow the link you’ll be sent to a site that hosts the malicious software.
Click “ok” and enter your systems administrator’s password and it will be installed on your computer with full system access after which you are, to use the jargon, “pwned”, or scuppered.
And you don’t even get to see the video you were after….
At the moment the fake codec is being spread via porn sites, but it will quickly spread to more mainstream sites, and that’s when it will get dangerous…
Here’s why this article is wrong…
Continue reading “Face facts: Macs get malware, people look at porn”
