As an IT professional, I’m honestly not sure how to feel about this.
On the one hand, it’s great that all the variants of MacDefender currently out there will be neutralized.
On the other hand, we’re surely going to see new flavors that go undetected by the update. Apple is getting into the anti-virus game, and potentially starting an arms race. But, what else could Apple do in this situation?
I think the key here is that this is a trojan installed by the user. Education is the greatest weapon against this type of attack -- not trying to keep up with users reinfecting themselves with each variant.
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As an IT professional, I’m honestly not sure how to feel about this.
On the one hand, it’s great that all the variants of MacDefender currently out there will be neutralized.
On the other hand, we’re surely going to see new flavors that go undetected by the update. Apple is getting into the anti-virus game, and potentially starting an arms race. But, what else could Apple do in this situation?
I think the key here is that this is a trojan installed by the user. Education is the greatest weapon against this type of attack -- not trying to keep up with users reinfecting themselves with each variant.
For starters, they could overhaul the concept of "safe files". This is the vector that allows auto-downloads and installer execution.
MacDefender is relatively tame. Next time it could be a rootkit packaged in a trojan.