psychologist

The stories have started to emerge and now the battle has begun.After years of being off-limits to hackers, the Apple Macintosh is now subject to the same sort of abuse that the PC has endured and survived over the years: malware.

Apple says it will send out some patches this week, but this just marks the beginning of a long battle. It will be ugly, as the platform is largely like the unprotected, the users are clueless, and there is zero resistance within the platform. The few Mac users who survive the barrage will probably be former PC users who are not so easily fooled by fake websites.

That said, a bunch of websites are now injecting code into the Mac to infect it with new Trojans. Let me give you an overview of the instructions from the Apple Support document. Read it carefully and try to understand the implications:

To avoid the malware, Apple advises users to either manually or force quit their browsers if an notification about any malware pops up. In the case that the browser automatically downloaded and launched the malware installer, Apple recommends that you go to the Downloads folder and delete the installer. Apple then provides detailed, multi-step instructions to remove the malware if it was already installed.

Mac users cannot do follow these recommendations because they've been trained since birth not to deal with such issues by hand. It's beneath them.

It's those of us who use PCs who go in, tweak, find, erase, and fiddle with things. The Mac is a perfect and easy-to-use "appliance," so giving these sorts of instructions is almost useless, unless Mac users have an IT guy living in the house.

Also, what typical Mac user is going to even know or understand some tricky website that is sending pop-up warnings to the user?

I use AVG as my anti-virus/anti-Trojan product, and when I encounter a website trying to pull this sort of thing, I get an immediate error message and the site is blocked. Currently, the Mac has no such software that I know of, and the user has to hope that Google, some other search engine, or the browser itself has some protection. Good luck with that.

PC users will be laughing out loud as this continues because this is just the beginning. The types of people who rejoice in this sort of vandalism just love it when targeted companies attempt counter-measures. It perks them up. While the PC users have literally endured decades of this sort of game playing, Mac users have rarely seen any of it. They have no idea what they are in for.

This also makes you ask yourself exactly how well protected smartphones are against attacks like this? You can be sure that the iPhone and iPad are going to be next on the hit list.

It's my opinion that these new malware attacks are the result of two things. One is the recent success and stock price of Apple which garners a lot of attention. But more importantly, the other reason is the never-ending bravado of the company and the users of its machines. Let's face it; Apple users out-and-out brag about how their machines are safer and less prone to this sort of attack. The word "gloat" comes to mind.

That said, many in the PC world have warned Apple that its OS is not any more secure than a Windows OS. And because there is no security infrastructure with scads of anti-malware systems available, the systems are actually more vulnerable.

I'm actually surprised this sort of attack hasn't happened sooner. The malware affects the price of the stock, sales of the machines, reputation, etc, which are just the sort of thing people like to attack nowadays.

So we'll see how this situation plays out, but one thing is for certain: the happy-go-lucky Mac owners will end up grumbling about it the same way PC users have done over the years. And this "What? Me worry?" attitude and smug smile will forever disappear. That's the good news, as far as I'm concerned. The bad news is the refuge is gone forever. You can be sure Linux isn't any safer either.

Labels: laptops and computers