Coach OutletI'm still not sure what I did to set it off. All I know is that I was blithely surfing the Web
using Apple's Safari browser on my MacBook Air last week, and a page identifying itself as "Apple security center" popped up. It declared that my Mac had 75
viruses, then launched the installation routine for something called Mac Protector.
Whoa. Whoa. Whoa. I'm pretty smart for my age — and I read my tech blogs — so I knew it was a Trojan horse, pretending to find malware on my computer so it
could offer to sell me anti-malware software. If I bit, it would try to steal my credit-card information. (Similar scams have dogged Windows users for
years.)
I closed the security center, then canceled out of the installer and dragged it into the trash. The intrusion was over, and my Mac and data were never really
at risk.
(See the top 10 Internet blunders.)
Still, it was an unnerving experience.
replica coach outletFor years, attacks against Apple's OS X
operating system have had a whiff of urban legend about them. Security researchers have repeatedly proved that Macs aren't impervious, but the troublemakers
have mostly steered clear. They've been too busy inflicting pain on a far bigger, juicer target: Windows.
Mac Protector is real, and it's cropping up in variants with names such as Mac Defender and MacGuard.
cheap hermes birkin They're landing on enough Macs that Apple released an OS X update this week designed
to foil them. Whereupon a version of the Trojan that bypassed the new security measures immediately appeared. (This could go on for a while.)
The attacks on Macs and Apple's response to them have stirred up new controversy in an ancient debate. Is OS X uniquely well protected from cybercrooks? As
its market share increases, will it become a more enticing target? Are Mac users who don't use security software asking for trouble?
These questions sound simple enough, but the discussion has been fueled as much by emotion and politics as by rational analysis. Some Mac fans have behaved
as if it were their birthright to live in a peaceable kingdom. They shouldn't. Some Windows users, itching to learn what schadenfreude feels like, keep
predicting that the sky is about to crash down on Macheads.
cheap nike shoes store It hasn't. Software companies
that sell Mac anti-malware utilities like to chime in regularly. Guess what stance they tend to take?
(See the best netbooks and netbook accessories.)
The first thing to understand about Mac Defender/Protector/Guard is that it's just one attack, and not a particularly devious one. Even in its most
pernicious form to date, it can do its dirty work only if its intended victim decides to install an unfamiliar piece of software that appears from nowhere —
which nobody should do under any circumstances. It's also a cakewalk to remove, unlike many Windows-based fake antivirus Trojans. (They can be virtually
impossible to eradicate without the help of third-party software.)
Moreover, the scariest pieces of malware aren't Trojans; they're more sophisticated threats like botnets, which can silently enlist your PC into a zombie
army of hundreds of thousands of machines dedicated to tasks like advertising fraud and spam distribution.
Coach Totes Bags Almost all of them target Windows, not OS X.
But the fact that the recent spate of Mac attacks could be worse doesn't mean that Apple types don't need to think about their computing safety. It's not
just the possibility of more OS X malware. Instead of putting a particular operating system in the crosshairs, no-goodniks are turning their attention to
social networks such as Facebook and Twitter, where they spam users, steal identities and generally do their best to wreak havoc. They don't care whether you
use Windows or a Mac, as long as your guard is down.
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