Mysterious Mac Malware Has Infected Victims for Years • Hacker News Board

Re: Mysterious Mac Malware Has Infected Victims for Years

#131

Post by Chaebixi » Tue, Jul 25, 2017, 2:58 PM UTC

valine wrote: post #93

Chaebixi wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The organizations with enough resources to hack iOS devices aren't interested in sending mass emails to steal bank account details. The average iOS user who keeps their device up to date simply doesn't have to worry about malware and suggesting otherwise is misleading. Again, no. Here's another counterexample (which is recent and appears to have been active on the App Store for ~1yr): https://researchcenter.paloalt…

What you linked is basically an elaborate phishing scheme. The exploit allows the installation of non app store apps, but that doesn't mean the installed apps can escape the sandbox. The worst thing it can do is try to trick the user into entering passwords into the app's fields. As far as malware goes it's pretty benign. There have been a handful of cases of iOS malware over the years, but no serious exploit has bee…

> They can be far reaching but again they can't breach the sandbox

False, they can breach the sandbox. The sandbox is software and it has exploitable flaws until proven otherwise (which hasn't happened).

Look, like I said in another comment: you'd be fine if you restricted yourself to relative comparisons, but for some reason you have to go too far and make absolute statements of security, statements which can't possibly be true. iOS might be more secure than other OSes, but it's still insecure, and it's dangerous and misleading to say that any users don't need to exercise reasonable caution.

Re: Mysterious Mac Malware Has Infected Victims for Years

#132

Post by zamalek » Tue, Jul 25, 2017, 3:55 PM UTC

epistasis wrote: post #14

>the widespread belief that they are virus-free, Macs aren't immune from invasive and dangerous malware. This is an area where it's really hard to extrapolate from my personal experience to the entire population, but is this really an accurate statement of many people's beliefs? I think what people actually think is that the chances are much lower of encountering malware in the wild on a Mac. In support of that, havi…

> many people's beliefs?

Apple marketed it as such even until relatively recently. I've personally heard a few people regurgitate that argument.

It's probably changing because that marketing worked and the platform became more popular: you don't write malware for a platform that nobody uses.

Re: Mysterious Mac Malware Has Infected Victims for Years

#133

Post by kbenson » Tue, Jul 25, 2017, 5:59 PM UTC

threeseed wrote: post #83

epistasis wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From that article: >It may have been technically accurate that Macs don’t get gummed up with PC viruses, but the implication that Apple is virus-free is certainly misleading. But that "implication" is an assumed implication that I haven't seen play out in my non-tech friends. I always thought that stories like those were just drummed up by anti-virus vendors to make sure that people continue buying their wares.

> I always thought that stories like those were just drummed up by anti-virus vendors to make sure that people continue buying their wares. Look at this article and every article about Mac viruses. Always an anti-virus vendor.

Just because the people alerting you to something have a vested interest in you being alerted, that doesn't make them wrong. It's good to know the incentives behind actions, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't look at the facts in each case and come to an informed decision.

Re: Mysterious Mac Malware Has Infected Victims for Years

#134

Post by kbenson » Tue, Jul 25, 2017, 6:12 PM UTC

valine wrote: post #73

Chaebixi wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So, in other words, iOS is insecure and vulnerable to malware. Governments don't have special hacking powers, they mainly have money and manpower. It's true, iOS might raise the bar a little bit compared to some other systems, but IMHO it's misleading and dangerous to claim that it's invulnerable.

The point is you're not going to get malware if you open the wrong email or go to the wrong site like you could on Windows. The organizations with enough resources to hack iOS devices aren't interested in sending mass emails to steal bank account details. The average iOS user who keeps their device up to date simply doesn't have to worry about malware and suggesting otherwise is misleading.

> The point is you're not going to get malware if you open the wrong email or go to the wrong site like you could on Windows.

So the point is that you aren't going to get malware on your small, entirely contrained and locked down portable computing device like you are on your larger, general purpose open computing device? Why even bother making that comparison?

OS X has plenty of vulnerabilities.[1] If you want to make a coherent argument, source your claims that modern windows only requires you visit a site or open an email, and we can look to see if Apple has had similar vulnerabilities in equivalent products.

1: https://www.cvedetails.com/vulnerability-list/vendor_id-49/p...

Re: Mysterious Mac Malware Has Infected Victims for Years

#135

Post by gaius » Tue, Jul 25, 2017, 7:01 PM UTC

stereo wrote: post #129

gaius wrote: post #113

Missing from the article: how to tell if you have it and what to do if you do

See if you have a ~/.client or a ~/Library/LaunchAgents/com.client.client.plist file.

Thanks for the tip - I'm clean :-)

Re: Mysterious Mac Malware Has Infected Victims for Years

#136

Post by munin » Tue, Jul 25, 2017, 9:50 PM UTC

kenferry wrote: post #98

munin wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There are many defense mechanisms to this that are inherent to the design and implementation of Darwin/Mac OS. Do you have an example? Beyond the idea of user/root separation, which doesn't really do much for modern single user computers: https://xkcd.com/1200/

Sandboxing. All third party apps in the Mac app store, and many system apps. Safari, Mail, Messages, FaceTime, Calendar, Contacts, Photos, Notes, and Reminders are all sandboxed. I also really like how Gatekeeper ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gatekeeper_(macOS) ) works – it quarantines documents such as word files, so that on first open you get a dialog pointing out that it's been downloaded. This is great, because…

Windows also does sandboxing.

Re: Mysterious Mac Malware Has Infected Victims for Years

#137

Post by coldtea » Tue, Jul 25, 2017, 11:24 PM UTC

kalleboo wrote: post #105

coldtea wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It was presently, and it's easy much happening now either. All these "viruses", or 99% of them, are just trojans.

Aren't most "viruses" for Windows also just people opening attachments or installing porn site video codecs they shouldn't be?

Most maybe, but not by any means all. And there are tons of auto-installing viruses for windows.

Re: Mysterious Mac Malware Has Infected Victims for Years

#138

Post by coldtea » Tue, Jul 25, 2017, 11:26 PM UTC

pjmlp wrote: post #116

coldtea wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> As someone new to the Mac ecosystem, is it standard practice to run an antivirus as it is on Windows? No, almost nobody does it (plus, a few "antivirus" products for Mac are malware themselves, e.g. Mac Defender etc.). Most so-called "viruses" for Mac are in fact merely trojans (programs you need to download and run yourself to infect you).

Corporate laptops everywhere I worked are subject to the same anti-virus policies, regardless of the operating system.

Well, corporate laptops where I work (company bought Macs usually) don't have mandatory (or even suggested) anti-viruses on them.

Re: Mysterious Mac Malware Has Infected Victims for Years

#139

Post by StillBored » Wed, Jul 26, 2017, 5:34 PM UTC

djrogers wrote: post #64

StillBored wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is plenty of iOS malware, its just burred behind a "free" app which appears to be a simplistic game or whatever..

Citation? AFAIK the iOS sandbox has not been broken on un-jailbroken iOS devices, so at worst you're getting a garbage app that doesn't do what it promises. I've never seen nor heard of any actual malware outbreak from a non-jailbroken app.

Maybe I should have put malware in quotes. I was generally referring more to the privacy invading, battery sucking, ad displaying, etc behaviors of the vast majority of applications. Which per wikipedia (and traditional usage of the term) makes them malware.

Apple/etc seem to be suck in the mindset of the various antivirus products before the advent of adaware/etc. So the products aren't strictly virus/trojans/worms/etc but they definitely fit the definition of malware and the end results are potentially just as bad. I would actually prefer any number of virus's over the some of the shenanigans the facebook app has been accused of.

Re: Mysterious Mac Malware Has Infected Victims for Years

#140

Post by 80211 » Thu, Jul 27, 2017, 1:50 AM UTC

threeseed wrote: post #86

80211 wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm a 50-something and my Mom with her Mac manages to get infected with browser-based malware. And she's pretty careful. But sometimes those "update" notifications look real to her.

I take it she isn't on a recent OSX version ? Because those apps shouldn't be able to be opened unless the author has code signed them. In which case if they are malware then just report it to Apple and they can centrally block the app.

Yes she is on the most recent OSX version.