three steps to being safe

New Mac Trojan variant: on not panicking and checking it out

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There’s been a lot of excitement today about a Trojan targeting Macintosh computers. There is some excellent in depth coverage over at Macworld, but I wanted to hit on some highlights for people who have been asking me about this.

First, don’t panic. Even if the high end estimates are true, about 600,000 macs are infected, which amounts to about 1% of all the Mac users out there. By those percentages, I would still carry on being a great deal more worried about a great deal many more things, such as your backup plan.

That being said, unlike 99% of all the other scares out there, this one is real in the sense that by visiting the wrong website (apparently, a lot of them are ones ending in a .nu domain – which I must admit, I’ve never even seen. Still, a lot of times those incredibly aggravating pop up windows that shady websites pop up for you lead to funkypants domains) you can become infected, and not even know it. The malware does give a few clues that something is up – upon installing itself within your user folder, it will pretend to run Software Update and ask for your administrator password, so it can gain wider access to the rest of the system. Even if you are savvy enough to deny it (and remember, always ask yourself, why is something suddenly asking for my password? Is this what I expected, and a normal part of my computer routine?), it will still install itself and run in a more limited, but still threatening, capacity.

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Maintaining Your Mac: a Boring Guide

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Recently, I had to buy a new car. Well, a car, as it’s only new if the first ten years of something’s life don’t count. In which case, huzzah! I’m still in my twenties.

Outside of that though, it wasn’t a new car, it wasn’t all that expensive, and boy, was it in great shape. In such great shape, in fact, that my trusty old VW Golf – which had been making horrible sounds that universally caused new passengers about five minutes of alarm and asking ‘No, really, are you sure it’s okay?’ – seemed to rise up, Jacob Marley like, from the metal grave to which it had been consigned to shame me for its ill treatment. It was nearly the same age, after all, and the only reason for the discrepancy (outside of the fact that I drive an absolutely insane amount, I suppose) is that I was much more of the school that as long as I could squeeze the last remaining, clanking, staggering miles out of the vehicle, well then, why take it in for repair?

We don’t really need to go into why that’s dumb. It is. Very. When you own a car, you factor in more than just the cost of purchasing it, but of gas, insurance, tires, and if you’re not a moron, maintenance. Thank you Captain Obvious, yes I know.

But it made me think about similar Total Cost of Ownership considerations for a computer. The obvious ones are there, of course – computer, internet connection, printer, and so on. Then the not-so-obvious but even more critical backups. What about maintenance? Smart people ask me about what they can do for their computers all the time.

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Security basics

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Lets be clear: if you have a computer, security is an issue. I could go further and say that if you are alive security is an issue, but lets stay out of any such lofty philosophical attempts.

Instead, let me explain – I say this because one of the most common questions, and one of the most temperature raising debates in geek gatherings, is the good old: Do Macs get viruses? (One could say: ‘Do Macs get virii?’ but while sounding cool they would also be wrong.) Laying aside the literal answer for the moment (no) allow me to point out that what’s really being asked there is: Is my Mac secure?

Hence the first sentence of this piece.

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