New Mac Trojan Discovered Related to Syria

"A new Mac Trojan has been discovered that creates a backdoor on an affected user’s machine. It was found on VirusTotal, sent by a user in Belarus. At the time of writing, the Command and Control (C&C) server is down and no longer sending commands to affected users. This appears to be a targeted attack, though the method of delivery is not yet known. So, while this has been affecting users in the wild, the overall threat level appears to be low.

The Trojan is an application that is disguised as a picture – the .app file-extension is not visible by default."

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Email In OS X Lion Is Crippled Until You Enable This Feature

Apple smashes patch record with gigantic update

Computerworld - Apple on Wednesday patched more than 130 vulnerabilities in Mac OS X, smashing a record the company set last March when it fixed over 90 flaws.

The update for OS X 10.6, a.k.a. Snow Leopard, and OS X 10.5, better known as Leopard, was Apple's first since September and the seventh for the year.

Calling the update "huge," Mac vulnerability expert Charlie Miller pointed out that even with a staggering 134 patches, there were plenty of flaws still around.

"Apple releases huge patch, still miss all my bugs," said Miller in a tweet late Wednesday. "Makes you realize how many bugs are in their code, or they're very unlucky."

Continue reading the story by Gregg Keizer

Psystar massacred in court

Mac clone maker Psystar was dealt a significant legal blow on Friday when federal judge William Alsup ruled (PDF) that it violated Apple’s copyright and the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.

Groklaw called the ruling by “a total massacre”!

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Russian Hackers pay 43 cents per hijacked Mac

Computerworld - "A network of Russian malware writers and spammers paid hackers 43 cents for each Mac machine they infected with bogus video software, a sign that Macs have become attack targets, a security researcher said yesterday.

One example, which has since gone offline, was Mac-codec.com, said Samosseiko. "Just a few months ago it was offering [43 cents] for each install and offered various promo materials in the form of Mac OS 'video players,'" he said."

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Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard: the Ars Technica review

Mac OS X 10.6, aka Snow Leopard has landed. This time around, Apple goes light on the glitz in favor of some heavy work under the hood. John Siracusa dives deep into Apple's new OS offering to see what's new, what's still the same, and whether it's worth upgrading.

In June of 2004, during the WWDC keynote address, Steve Jobs revealedMac OS X 10.4 Tiger to developers and the public for the first time. When the finished product arrived in April of 2005, Tiger was the biggest, most important, most feature-packed release in the history of Mac OS X by a wide margin. Apple's marketing campaign reflected this, touting "over 150 new features."

All those new features took time. Since its introduction in 2001, there had been at least one major release of Mac OS X each year. Tiger took over a year and a half to arrive. At the time, it definitely seemed worth the wait. Tiger was a hit with users and developers. Apple took the lesson to heart and quickly set expectations for the next major release of Mac OS X,Leopard. Through various channels, Apple communicated its intention to move from a 12-month to an 18-month release cycle for Mac OS X. Leopard was officially scheduled for "spring 2007."

As the date approached, Apple's marketing machine trod a predictable path.

Apple even went so far as to list all 300 new features on its website. As it turns out, "spring" was a bit optimistic. Leopard actually shipped at the end of October 2007, nearly two and a half years after Tiger. Did Leopard really have twice as many new features as Tiger? That's debatable. What's certain is that Leopard included a solid crop of new features and technologies, many of which we now take for granted. (For example, have you had a discussion with a potential Mac user since the release of Leopard without mentioning Time Machine? I certainly haven't.)

Mac OS X appeared to be maturing. The progression was clear: longer release cycles, more features. What would Mac OS X 10.6 be like? Would it arrive three and a half years after Leopard? Would it and include 500 new features? A thousand?

At WWDC 2008, Bertrand Serlet announced a move that he described as "unprecedented" in the PC industry.

That's right, the next major release of Mac OS X would have no new features. The product name reflected this: "Snow Leopard." Mac OS X 10.6 would merely be a variant of Leopard. Better, faster, more refined, more... uh... snowy.

This was a risky strategy for Apple. After the rapid-fire updates of 10.1, 10.2, and 10.3 followed by the riot of new features and APIs in 10.4 and 10.5, could Apple really get away with calling a "time out?" I imagine Bertrand was really sweating this announcement up on the stage at WWDC in front of a live audience of Mac developers. Their reaction? Spontaneous applause. There were even a few hoots and whistles.

Many of these same developers applauded the "150+ new features" in Tiger and the "300 new features" in Leopard at past WWDCs. Now they were applauding zero new features for Snow Leopard? What explains this?

It probably helps to know that the "0 New Features" slide came at the end of an hour-long presentation detailing the major new APIs and technologies in Snow Leopard. It was also quickly followed by a back-pedaling ("well, there is one new feature...") slide describing the addition of Microsoft Exchange support. In isolation, "no new features" may seem to imply stagnation. In context, however, it served as a developer-friendly affirmation.

The overall message from Apple to developers was something like this: "We're adding a ton of new things to Mac OS X that will help you write better applications and make your existing code run faster, and we're going to make sure that all this new stuff is rock-solid and as bug-free as possible. We're not going to overextend ourselves adding a raft of new customer-facing, marketing-friendly features. Instead, we're going to concentrate 100% on the things that affect you, the developers."

But if Snow Leopard is a love letter to developers, is it a Dear John letter to users? You know, those people that the marketing department might so crudely refer to as "customers." What's in it for them? Believe it or not, the sales pitch to users is actually quite similar. As exhausting as it has been for developers to keep up with Apple's seemingly never-ending stream of new APIs, it can be just as taxing for customers to stay on top of Mac OS X's features. Exposé, a new Finder, Spotlight, a new Dock, Time Machine, a new Finder again, anew iLife and iWork almost every year, and on and on. And as much as developers hate bugs in Apple's APIs, users who experience those bugs as application crashes have just as much reason to be annoyed.

Enter Snow Leopard: the release where we all get a break from the new-features/new-bugs treadmill of Mac OS X development. That's the pitch.

Continue reading the full story at Ars Technica By John Siracusa

FUD report: Snow Leopard 'not as secure' as Windows...

"Another week, another lax Mac OS X security FUD emanating from the usual quarters, making the risible claim Apple’s platform is inherently less secure than Windows.

Story goes like this: The hacker who successfully broke into a Mac at a hacker’s conference some time ago has tested Snow Leopard against WIndows 7, and accuses the Mac OS as being “less secure” than Microsoft’s Vista upgrade.

Charlie Miller is one of the team from Independent Security Evaluators who successfully "pwned and owned" an Apple MacBook Air, in a hacking contest sponsored by TippingPoint's Zero Day Initiative."

Read the full story at 9 to 5 Mac by Jonny Evans

"He conveniently forgets all of the other security features in Snow Leopard. Why doesn't he touch on:
- stack frame protection
- code injection protection
- automatic replacement of common C functions (e.g. srtcpy) with hardened versions
- heap consistency checks
- the reduction in setuid executables
His opinion on ASLR is valid, but extrapolating that to the overall security of the OS is garbage."

20 best new features in OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard

So you think Apple's new OS has little to offer? Think again

1. Exchange support

2. Better stacks

3. Dock Exposé

4. Minimised window options

5. Malware protection

6. Revamped eject manager

7. Improved Keyboard Shortcuts management

8. Revised Services

9. Smart text select

10. Text replacement

11. Enhanced view options

12. Better accessibility

13. Recording and trimming in QuickTime

14. Date and time in the menu bar

15. Time-zone tracking

16. iCal events inspectors

17. Sandboxed Safari plug-ins

18. Automatic printer driver updates

19. Faster wake and shut down

20. Smaller footprint

Read the full details here

New Mac OS X DNS changer spreads through social engineering

TrendMicro is reporting on a newly discovered4th member of the OSX_JAHLAV malware family.

The latest variant is once again relying on social engineering, this time spreading under a QuickTime Player update (QuickTimeUpdate.dmg) with a DNS changer component enabling the malware authors to redirect and monitor the traffic of the victim.

More info on OSX_JAHLAV.D:

The Trojan contains component files detected as UNIX_JAHLAV.D and obfuscated scripts detected as PERL_JAHLAV.F. The Perl script then downloads a file from a malicious site and stores it as /tmp/{random 3 numbers}, detected as UNIX_DNSCHAN.AA, which allows a malicious user to monitor the affected user’s activities. This may also cause the user to be redirected to phishing sites or sites where other malware may be downloaded from.

Not only are cybercriminals beginning to acknowledge the “under-served” Mac OS X segment, but also, they’re already borrowing tricks from the Microsoft Windows playbook such as OS-independent tactics like fake codecs and bogus video players. The irony? Both the Mac OS X and Windows malware are hosted on the same domains, with copies of each served on the basis on browser detection.

Read the full story at ZDNet by Dancho Danchev

Still for security, you can't beat Mac OS X because we know of well over 236,000 malicious malware items. These are mostly meant for the MS-Windows environment. Only about 700 are meant for the various Unix/Linux distributions. Current known Mac OSX malware count is even less with 20, so pretty much non-existent at the moment.

Microsoft Office 2008 for Mac Service Pack 2 Released today

Microsoft Office 2008 for Mac Service Pack 2 Delivers Top Fixes and New Microsoft Connections for Mac Customers

A majority of Office for Mac users recommend the suite — compatibility is a top reason.

REDMOND, Wash. — July 20, 2009 — Microsoft Corp.’s Macintosh Business Unit (MacBU) released Microsoft Office 2008 for Mac Service Pack 2 (SP2) today — a midcycle free update that is designed to improve the Office 2008 experience where it matters most to customers: speed, stability and compatibility. SP2 delivers highly requested features throughout the suite as well as a new tool, Document Connection for Mac, that helps improve access and browsing to documents on SharePoint Products and Technologies and Microsoft Office Live Workspace. These new improvements and features are part of Microsoft’s long-standing investment in delivering excellent cross-platform collaboration and compatibility for Mac users, and the commitment has paid off. According to a recent study, customers indicate that the ability to share files while ensuring document fidelity between colleagues and friends on Macs and PCs is a top advantage of Office for Mac.¹ This customer confidence in Microsoft Office compatibility is the biggest reason why nine out of 10 Office for Mac users would recommend the software to others.

“There’s never been a better time to try Office 2008 for Mac — with SP2 we are not only delivering on top customer requests midcycle, but also taking a first step in bringing Microsoft software plus services to Mac users,” said Mike Tedesco, senior product manager for MacBU at Microsoft. “This connection unlocks the door for Mac users to Microsoft services for easier collaboration and file sharing with colleagues, customers and classmates.”

SP2: Speedier Performance, More Reliable

SP2 provides several updates across the Microsoft Office 2008 suite for an improved experience. The team incorporated customer feedback received through a variety of channels to prioritize updates and maximize the potential of the suite with increased compatibility and speed. Highlights of the release include the following:

•	Two new highly requested features in Microsoft PowerPoint 2008 for Mac:
•	Custom Path Animation adds the ability to author motion-path animations. Users previously could only play back motion paths.
•	Default Theme lets users define their default theme, including fonts, color scheme and slide layouts.
•	Increased speed in Microsoft Word 2008 for Mac (launch and scroll times) as well as Microsoft Excel 2008 for Mac with features such as calculation performance.

File Access — When, Where and How Users Want It

Many MacBU service packs are typically limited to feature updates, but with Office 2008 SP2, the MacBU team is releasing significant new capabilities that extend the collaboration and file-sharing abilities of Microsoft Office users:

•

Microsoft Office Live Workspace. Document Connection enables a more seamless experience for Office 2008 users to save and open documents to Microsoft Office Live Workspace from Microsoft Office applications, including Word, Excel and PowerPoint. In addition, the Microsoft Office Live Workspace today announced expanded Mac browser support to include Safari 4 along with existing support for Firefox 2.0 (required for Mac OS X 10.2.x or later).

•

SharePoint. Document Connection also improves the SharePoint experience for Mac users, allowing for easier collaboration within a SharePoint environment by simplifying how users can browse, access and manage files online and offline.

Customers Can Try Office 2008 for Mac SP2 Today

Customers can download SP2 for free today at 10 a.m. PDThttp://www.microsoft.com/mac/downloads.mspx, and it also will be available from Microsoft AutoUpdate. Mac users also can access a full trial version of Office 2008 for free athttp://www.microsoft.com/mac/products/Office2008/trial-download.mspx.

About Microsoft Macintosh Business Unit

The Macintosh Business Unit (MacBU) at Microsoft is a leading developer of software and online products for the Macintosh platform. The group is composed of Mac product experts dedicated to creating innovative software for Mac customers worldwide. For 25 years, Microsoft has developed award-winning software for the Mac. In January 2008, the MacBU released Microsoft Office 2008 for Mac, a productivity suite that includes the e-mail application and personal information manager Entourage 2008, Word 2008, Excel 2008, PowerPoint 2008 and Messenger for Mac 7.0. More information about the MacBU and Microsoft Macintosh products is available at http://www.microsoft.com/mac.

About Microsoft

Founded in 1975, Microsoft (Nasdaq “MSFT”) is the worldwide leader in software, services and solutions that help people and businesses realize their full potential.

¹ Independent study conducted by Kelton Research; respondents consisted of 1,008 Mac users ages 18 and over who have ever used a productivity suite.

Note to editors: If you are interested in viewing additional information on Microsoft, please visit the Microsoft Web page at http://www.microsoft.com/presspass on Microsoft’s corporate information pages. Web links, telephone numbers and titles were correct at time of publication, but may since have changed. For additional assistance, journalists and analysts may contact Microsoft’s Rapid Response Team or other appropriate contacts listed at http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/contactpr.mspx.

Apple Mac malware: caught on camera

"Pob in our analysis labs blogged earlier this week about a new variant of the RSPlug Trojan horse for Mac OS X that he had written protection against. One of the ways in which the OSX/RSPlug-F Mac Trojan horse is being distributed by hackers is in the form of a poisoned HDTV/DTV program called MacCinema.



Oh, and Windows users shouldn't feel too smug about this either. If you visit the site on a Windows computer, it will serve up a malicious Windows executable from the Zlob family of malware rather than a Mac OS X Trojan horse."

This attack does not depend on any browser vulnerabilities - it works by the user being convinced via social engineering that this is a program that they would like to run on their computer.

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Chrome gets a Mac deadline!

Stephen Shankland of CNET is reporting that "Showing signs that it's working to meet requests for new developments to its Chrome browser, Google on Friday said it hopes to release versions for Mac OS X and Linux by the first half of the year, and it released a new version Wednesday that paves the way for the most requested feature: extensions.

Google has high hopes for Chrome--in particular, the Internet giant wants better performance, so browsing the Web is faster and Web-based applications are more powerful. Now Google is filling in some missing pieces Chrome needs in order to attain wider usage.

Brian Rakowski, Chrome's product manager, said the company wants to release Chrome for Mac and Linux before the first half of 2009 is up."

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Analysis: Fear of infection

Apple shouldn't lead us to believe that the Mac is impervious to viruses, as Mac OS X could be compromised at any time...

Column by Kenny Hemphill of MacUser

"The thorny and almost decade-old question of whether Mac OS X is immune from malware cropped up again recently when bloggers including the BBC's Rory Cellan-Jones reported that Apple had posted advice in a Knowledge Base article on its support site that read: 'Apple encourages the widespread use of multiple antivirus utilities so that virus programmers have more than one program to circumvent, thus making the whole virus writing process more difficult.' The article then listed companies such as Symantec and Intego as publishers of anti-virus software

This story, had it been true, would have been big news. Apple, after all, has been running adverts comparing the security nightmare that is Windows with what it claims is an infection-immune Mac OS X. For it to suddenly start recommending running not just one anti-virus application but 'multiple antivirus utilities' would have been a remarkable volte face. Perhaps that alone should have been enough to alert, if not bloggers, then certainly journalists that there was more to the 'story' than met the eye. As Cellan-Jones and others admitted in follow-up posts, the Knowledge Base article in question wasn't new. In fact, it hadn't even been updated since June 2007. Analyses of the thread number and the numerical sequence of Knowledge Base articles, dates the original post around 1992, and archive.org has a record of a page at the URL of the article from 2001, according to The Unofficial Apple Weblog. In other words, this is an ancient article whose origins pre-date Mac OS X by nearly a decade."

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How To Delete Files to Prevent Crashes in OS X 10.5.6

Apple has recently posted several articles that offer advice on how to prevent crashes and freezes related to the Mac OS X 10.5.6 update. The fixes all involve deleting files, most often heretofore little-known system files.

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Apple's Take On Mobile Unix

The Mac community was buzzing in late November when the director of Apple’s Unix group showed a slide at the LISA (Large System Adminstration) conference that predicted that the Snow Leopard version of Mac OS X would ship in the first quarter of 2009. In presentation they offered some interesting bits of their own.

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Review: Parallels Desktop 4 For Mac Boosts Stability, Performance

The previous version of the Parallels virtualization package for running Windows and Linux on Macs was a buggy disappointment. Will version 4 be able to win back users' hearts?

By Mitch Wagner, InformationWeek
Nov. 18, 2008

When the first version of Parallels Desktop hit the streets two years ago, it was just amazing. The software allowed you to run Windows, along with its applications, on Mac OS X. Mac users just flipped for it.

But with Parallels Version 3, introduced last year, the company seemed to have lost its way. The software was slow and buggy. Users put up with the problems for a while, because it was the only product of its kind, but when competition emerged, in the form of VMware Fusion, users switched to the new product. VMware even ran its own "switcher" marketing campaign, like Apple did against Windows.

Today, I know about a dozen people who use the VMware product. I only know one person who still uses Parallels. He complains about it a lot.

This month the company (also called Parallels) introduced Parallels Desktop 4, which it says has significantly improved performance and stability over the previous version, and a few new features.

In other words: Parallels is back from its long spree in Vegas, with a bouquet of roses in hand and a hangdog expression its face. It's promising to be good. It wants us to take it back.

Should we open our hearts and give the relationship with Parallels one more try? Or should we kick it to the curb?

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There's nothing easy about letting Apple into the enterprise

Mac veterans say Apple doesn't always act like other technology partners. Today, half of Serena's workers opt for the MacBook over a Lenovo laptop according to their senior manager of worldwide IT operations. Not only have support calls declined, but users are also grateful for the choice.

In terms of enterprise penetration, Forrester Research says that Mac OS use rose from 3.6% in October 2007 to 4.5% in June 2008, based on more than 50,000 clients connecting to Forrester's Web site. And according to in Steve Jobs in his keynote address at the Apple World Wide Developer's Conference in June, 35% of the Fortune 500 are testing the iPhone's new enterprise features, including Walt Disney, Oracle, Genentech and Kraft Foods. Jobs also claimed that more than 250,000 developers have downloaded the iPhone SDK.

Outside of Apple's own efforts, five software companies formed an alliance in June to promote the use of the Mac in the corporate environment, including Atempo, Centrify, Group Logic , LANrev and Parallels.

The group, dubbed the Enterprise Desktop Alliance, says its products enable IT organizations to deploy, integrate and manage Macs, using the same standard tools used for Windows. It claims that enterprises can achieve the same level of control, security, policy compliance and services that they currently have with their Windows platforms.

Meanwhile, some users contend that the perception that Macintoshes don't play well in the enterprise is largely exaggerated. Ben Hanes, senior systems analyst at Children's Hospital of Oakland Research Institute (CHORI), in Oakland, Calif., has been supporting Macintoshes for more than five years. Half of the research organization's 600 computers are Macs, with about two dozen running Parallels virtualization software.

Hanes' data center is a mix of Apple and Windows servers, with Windows running on the database and file servers, and Apple Xserves running applications that touch the Web, including a mail server, a Web server and an iChat server. "I definitely stick to the philosophy that whatever is on the perimeter is Apple technology because it's proven to be secure," Hanes says.

According to Hanes, the Macintosh desktops plug into the network "just like a PC," thanks to products like ExtremeZ-IP from Group Logic, which enable file and printer sharing between Mac desktops and the Windows server. Hanes says he has successfully integrated Macintosh desktops with Active Directory, using the "golden triangle" strategy, in which Mac clients authenticate with Active Directory while getting managed group settings from a Mac OS X server.

Hanes believes his team has been successful deploying Apple technology in part because they conduct a lot of research, apply a lot of scrutiny before making final decisions, and keep an open mind about what they use, including open-source technology. For instance, he says it took a year to establish that the team would use Communigate Pro from Communigate Systems for its e-mail server. And for its antivirus platform, CHORI selected Sophos because it enables both Macs and PCs to be viewed on one console.

Hanes does use Apple's Xserve RAID technology but says the company's move away from storage doesn't concern him. "They've certified EMC software to work with Apple," he says, "so switching will be a trivial thing."

As for service, Hanes says he has certified CHORI as a self-service shop, which means it gets the same rights as a Macintosh repair consultant, such as next-day parts delivery. You need to have 150 Macintoshes to qualify, he says. Hanes also participates in Apple beta programs and NDAs.
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Apple Details Cursor-Based QuickLook and Advanced Functions

Apple is exploring new ways to use the Mac OS cursor to provide users with additional information and usability options for files residing on their hard drive or linked via the internet before they're triggered or activated.

A patent filing published for the first time on Thursday notes that it's often useful for a user to be given an indication as to the content of a target file or link, before the user clicks on the user-activatable element that will open the target.

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Inside MobileMe: Mac and PC cloud sync and mobile push

MobileMe is advertised as push messaging service, so some users were disappointed to find that some desktop updates may take as long as fifteen minutes to find their way up to the cloud. However, the service does also support push IMAP email as well as full desktop push updates from the cloud, at least on Mac OS X. Here's how Apple's service works

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Hidden Feature of OS X Printing: CUPS

The Great Office War - Watch more free videos

A little-known secret service of OS X (and many Linux distros, as well) is CUPS, a printer management system. It is more powerful than the built-in GUI, but the GUI interfaces with the same daemon (also part of CUPS). The networking functionality and settings are really neat. Its really configurable, too, with a config file similar to Apache’s. It's also an excellent tool for fixing printer weird problems. If your having trouble seeing shared printers hosted by Mac's running older versions of OS X then click here. 

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