[Mac-admin] MacDefender, Round II (and a half).

[Robert Lukens]

Mac Users:

Another round of whack-a-mole:   Overnight, Apple has updated the
signature of the software that downloads the MacDefender trojan.  If you
installed the recent patch for OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard, the
XprotectUpdater will attempt to retrieve new signatures once a day and
detect this new variant.

This mechanism will allow for quick updates of signatures of suspecct
files downloaded by browsers.  However, according to the URL below, this
capability will not necessarily catch the files downloaded by the code
that was downloaded by browsers -- this because Xprotect is not really a
full anti-virus utility, but just a filter that checks what browsers
download.  A secondary transfer by alternate means may go unnoticed.

> http://nakedsecurity.sophos.com/2011/06/02/apple-to-malware-authors-tag-youre-it/

The days of virus-free Macs are over.  Please protect your systems.

The Lab provides Symantec AV for Macs.  I have been running it for over
a year and have seen no operational issues.  The URL above also provides
one alternative for the protection of home systems.


Thanks to Steve Gagnon for pointers to this info.

Bob







--
  Robert J. Lukens                       Jefferson Lab
  Computer Security Manager        12000 Jefferson Ave
                                           - Suite # 7
  rlukens at jlab.org               Newport News VA 23606
  757-269-6376                                     USA


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