Journal: News & Comment

How vulnerable is your Mac?

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There have been reports of a malicious Mac OS X trojan program out there. Really, there's not much to worry about if you're careful. Here's the basic thing:

Finally, and perhaps most importantly, never provide your administrator password to an untrusted application or install routine. Make sure, when downloading applications from any source, that the author is reputable and (if possible) other users have already tested the release. Unwittingly giving arbitrary code the permission to run is perhaps the greatest current security threat for Mac OS X users.

Just remember that, and watch for things that ask for passwords. Of course, Jakob Nielsen has a good point today:

User education puts the burden on the wrong shoulders. It's like the old Wild West, where the answer to crime was that every man carried a gun. In civilized society, we've abandoned this approach in favor of a professional police force to deal with criminals. When there is a mismatch between technology and people, the answer should not be to change the humans. The answer should be to change the computers. Computers and the Internet were both developed under the assumptions that everyone was trustworthy and there would never be any crime. That's obviously no longer true, and we need to rearchitect the technology accordingly. Even the Old West eventually transitioned to laws, courts, police, and jails.

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