INTEGO SPOTS MALWARE BLOCKER IN SNOW LEOPARD (Apple Mac OS X)

The Mac Observer ^ | Tuesday, August 25, 2009 | Bryan Chaffin

[Star Traveler]

Intego Spots Malware Blocker in Snow Leopard
August 25th, 2009 at 5:40 PM
by Bryan Chaffin

Snow Leopard contains a malware blocker, according to Mac antivirus software developer Intego. The company posted a screenshot of a warning dialog box on its blog that it said was from Snow Leopard, the Mac OS X 10.6 upgrade Apple is shipping on Friday.

"We're not sure yet exactly how this works," the firm wrote, "but the above screen shot shows this feature working with a download made via Safari, detecting a version of the RSPlug Trojan horse in a downloaded disk image."

If the screen shot is legit, it would suggest that Apple has added some form of malware scanner into the operating system. Malware is typically used to describe applications that either tag along with otherwise legit downloads (or in pirated software), or are simply not the download they are purported to be.

The news coincides with the introduction of two new commercials from Apple that tout the Mac platform as being the answer for people tired of dealing with "thousands of viruses" and other hassles on their PCs.

While there are no known Mac viruses in the wild, there has been an increase in trojan horse malware aimed at Mac pirates in the last year. Such a tool in Snow Leopard could well further protect Mac users out of the box.

[SunkenCiv]

Heh... the virus shield on the work machine got an auto-update today; there are two quarantined files on the drive, and the antivirus can’t make them non-harmful. It suggests that I leave them quarantined, and doesn’t give me the option of deleting them. Wintel of course.

[goldstategop]

An anti-virus is unnecessary in Mac OSX. Like Linux and other UNIX platforms, viruses and malware are not a concern because the system runs under a least privileged access. You need a good third party firewall like Intego’s Barrier X, but that’s about it.