Showing posts with label Mac OS X. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Mac OS X. Show all posts
Apple is 10 years behind Microsoft on security, expert says
Articles
Apple may be the most valuable company in the world, but when it comes to security, the Cupertino-based company doesn’t hold a candle to Microsoft. Kaspersky Lab co-founder and chief executive Eugene Kaspersky on Wednesday told CBR that Apple is a decade behind Microsoft in terms of computer security.
"I think they are ten years behind Microsoft in terms of security,"Kaspersky said.
"For many years I’ve been saying that from a security point of view there is no big difference between Mac and Windows. It’s always been possible to develop Mac malware, but [Flashback] was a bit different. For example it was asking questions about being installed on the system and, using vulnerabilities, it was able to get to the user mode without any alarms.”More than 600,000 Macs were infected by the Flashback trojan virus before it was discovered earlier this month and the exploit it used to infect OS X PCs was patched.
“Apple will understand very soon that they have the same problems Microsoft had ten or 12 years ago,” Kaspersky said. ”They will have to make changes in terms of the cycle of updates and so on and will be forced to invest more into their security audits for the software.”
If MAC was the most popular OS in the world, Hackers would have bankrupted Apple!
"If MAC was the most popular OS in the world hackers would have bankrupted apple!"More than half a million Apple computers have been infected with the Flashback Trojan, according to a Russian anti-virus firm.
The report claims that about 600,000 Macs have installed the malware - potentially allowing them to be hijacked and used as a "botnet".
The firm, Dr Web, says that more than half that number are based in the US.
Apple has released a security update, but users who have not installed the patch remain exposed.
Flashback was first detected last September when anti-virus researchers flagged up software masquerading itself as a Flash Player update. Once downloaded it deactivated some of the computer's security software.
Later versions of the malware exploited weaknesses in the Java programming language to allow the code to be installed from bogus sites without the user's permission.
Remote control
Dr Web said that once the Trojan was installed it sent a message to the intruder's control server with a unique ID to identify the infected machine.
"By introducing the code criminals are potentially able to control the machine," the firm's chief executive Boris Sharov told the BBC.
"We stress the word potential as we have never seen any malicious activity since we hijacked the botnet to take it out of criminals' hands. However, we know people create viruses to get money.
"The largest amounts of bots - based on the IP addresses we identified - are in the US, Canada, UK and Australia, so it appears to have targeted English-speaking people."
Dr Web also notes that 274 of the infected computers it detected appeared to be located in Cupertino, California - home to Apple's headquarters.
Update wait
Java's developer, Oracle, issued a fix to the vulnerability on 14 February, but this did not work on Macintoshes as Apple manages Java updates to its computers.
Apple released its own "security update" on Wednesday - more than eight weeks later. It can be triggered by clicking on the software update icon in the computer's system preferences panel.
The security firm F-Secure has also posted detailed instructions about how to confirm if a machine is infected and how to remove the Trojan.
Although Apple's system software limits the actions its computers can take without requesting their users' permission, some security analysts suggest this latest incident highlights the fact that the machines are not invulnerable.
"People used to say that Apple computers, unlike Windows PCs, can't ever be infected - but it's a myth," said Timur Tsoriev, an analyst at Kaspersky Lab.
Apple could not provide a statement at this time
Source: BBC News
Lion DiskMaker Creates Mac OS X Lion Install DVDs and Thumb Drives Automatically
We've shown you how to manually create a bootable Mac OS X Lion DVD or thumb drive, but now an app called Lion DiskMaker can automate the process for you. You just download it, insert the media you want to use to create your install, and let it take care of the rest.
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| Mac OS X Lion DVD Maker |
For Lion DiskMaker to work, you'll need to have a copy of Lion installed to your Applications folder. Once it's there, just launch the app and it'll locate it. Once it does, you'll get to choose what type of media you want to use to create the install disk. If you want to use something like an SD card instead of a USB thumb drive, you can still do that by using the thumb drive. Just choose what you want and let Lion DiskMaker handle the rest. If you want a physical copy of Lion but don't want to do much work to get one, this free little utility can help you out.
How to Burn Your Own OS X Lion Install DVD or USB Drive
Getting Lion from the App Store is convenient, but if you want a physical copy of the installation, you can easily make your own Lion install DVD or USB drive with Disk Utility.
If you want to do a clean installation of Lion (or you want to install it on a Hackintosh), you'll need to install it on some sort of physical media. Apple will be releasing a flash drive installer for a whopping $70 in August, but you don't need to wait (or pay twice the OS's price) to get it. It's very easy to burn Apple's installer to a single layer DVD or flash drive of 5GB or larger.
Important: Note that the Lion installer deletes itself if you upgrade, so if you want to do this, you have to do it before you update your computer to Lion. You can always re-download Lion after the fact, but geez, who wants to do that? Once you've got it on your system, here's what you do:
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| How to Install Mac OS X Lion from DVD or USB |
- Download Lion from the Mac App Store. The installer should show up in your Applications folder.
- Right-click on the installer and hit "Show Package Contents". Navigate to Contents > SharedSupport and look for a file called "InstallESD.dmg".
- Open up Disk Utility and drag the DMG file into the left-hand sidebar. If you're burning it to a DVD, insert your DVD, select the disk image in the sidebar, and hit the "Burn" button. Skip down to the last step to use it.
- If you want to burn Lion to a USB flash drive, plug it in and click on it in the left-hand sidebar in Disk Utility. Go to the Partition tab and select "1 Partition" from the dropdown menu. Choose "Mac OS Extended (Journaled) on the left.
- Hit the Options button under the partition table and choose "GUID Partition Table". You'll need this to make the drive bootable on a Mac. Hit the Apply button when you're done to format your drive (note: it will erase everything on the drive).
- Click on the "Restore" tab, choose the InstallESD.dmg file as the source and your flash drive as the destination. Hit the Apply button and it will create your bootable USB drive.
- Reboot into OS X and hold the option key when you hear the startup chime. You can boot into your DVD or flash drive from there.
You'll not only be able to install Lion from this drive, but you'll also be able to use Disk Utiltiy, recover from a Time Machine backup, and do everything else you could do with the old installation DVDs. Note that when you install Lion, it'll create a recovery partition with all these features anyway, so you don't need the DVD unless you're doing a clean install. Though it's always nice to have around in case something happens, like you erase your entire drive. Not that that's ever happened to me 3 times in one week or anything.
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