Mac Guard: Apple users hit by second Mac malware scam
Earlier this month, Mac users began noticing advertisements for a product called Mac Defender, which promised to keep out a range of nasty malware and computer viruses. The problem: Mac Defender was a piece of malware itself. Once downloaded, the program wreaked all sorts of havoc on your machine, and in some cases, apparently flooded your screen with pop-up pornography sites.
Now comes word that Mac Defender 鈥撯�� which required users to actually click through a few sites and enter a password before the malware latched onto the hard drive 鈥撯�� has spawned the variant bug Mac Guard, which requires users to enter no password at all. Instead, the malware downloads more or less automatically, after a user has logged on to one or another fake sites. More information .
This is terrible news for the legions of Mac users worldwide, who are very used to bragging that their machines never get viruses. ("Oh, you have a Windows machine? That's so sad. You must get SO much malware," etc.) But fret not 鈥撯�� solutions abound. You can, for instance, click over to a site such as BleepingComputer.com, which has a comprehensive and easy-to-follow Mac Defender-removal kit.
Or you can visit the new Apple , which updated its anti-Mac-malware solutions. Of course, you still may be left with a question: Is this the sort of bug that Mac users should start getting used to? (In other words, will you have to stop incessantly teasing your PC user friends?) The answer: It's hard to say.
"There's a message implicit in Apple's support page and upcoming patch for Mac Defender: This is a single security threat, and we can handle it," Jared Newman over at PC World. "But as Mac Guard demonstrates, the response sets a precedent that could be difficult to maintain. A software update may repel Mac Defender and its variants, but I'd be shocked if future malware attacks didn't require a fresh response."
