In an unusual about-face, Apple has gone from telling AppleCare reps not to help callers remove MacDefender infections to releasing a support document explaining how to do it along with a security update to Mac OS X 10.6.7 to stop MacDefender and its variants. Hopefully it will also stop MacGuard, the new variant Intego has found that doesn’t even require an admin password to install.
GadgetTrak has added a feature that enables users to file police reports directly from within the theft recovery service’s Web-based control panel. Over 150 police agencies in the United States offer online filing of police reports, and if your GadgetTrak-enabled device is lost within one of those areas, you can now more quickly involve law enforcement in your loss.
Please welcome our newest TidBITS sponsor, the backup service Dolly Drive, which brings online backups to Apple’s Time Machine!
The company behind the popular 1Password utility has changed its name from Agile Web Solutions (which didn’t really reflect what they did) to the pithier and more accurate AgileBits. It’s not big news, but in a day and age where there are all sorts of phishing scams and the like, knowing the true identity of our tool makers is important.
The online password management site LastPass may have suffered a breach recently, and while there’s no direct evidence that customer data was stolen (and any that may have been taken was fully encrypted), the event highlights both the dangers of online storage and how responsible companies handle such situations.
If you can’t get enough of last week’s security news about the Weyland-Yutani “crimekit” and the MACDefender “scareware,” tune in to this segment of the Tech Night Owl Live podcast with Gene Steinberg.
MacBreak Weekly with Leo Laporte and Andy Ihnatko is always informative and entertaining, but with a panel that included Adam, Macworld’s Chris Breen, and John Gruber of Daring Fireball, this show turned out to be one for the record books. The excellent discussions covered the new iMac, last week’s security news, more on Location-gate, the thickness of the white iPhone 4, and what we might see from Apple as the next cloud-based service.
Intego has identified a new piece of malware called MACDefender that masquerades as an antivirus program in an attempt to sucker users into paying for the program, likely putting credit card numbers at risk for being stolen as well.
The appearance of a new “crimekit” aimed at Mac OS X users is cause for concern, but not yet for a change in behavior, assuming, of course, that you were behaving cautiously up to this point.
Attempting to put the controversy over iPhone location tracking to rest, Apple has released a Q&A that answers the primary questions about what the iPhone is doing and why. Apple even acknowledged that there are some bugs in iOS that will be fixed in a forthcoming update.
A security breach at digital certificate provider Comodo has resulted in emergency updates for all operating systems and Web browsers, including Mac OS X, iOS, and Safari. Learn why digital certificates are so important, but also so problematic.
A newly discovered vulnerability affects nearly all Apple products. Rich Mogull has the details, including how to protect yourself until Apple issues a patch.
Thursday, March 31st has been dubbed World Backup Day, and a bunch of online backup providers have special deals in the works.
Encrypting your iOS device is an excellent way to protect your data, but if you upgraded from iOS 3 to 4, encryption might not be enabled... even if you think it is. Here’s how to make sure you’re protected.
Adobe has issued a security advisory about a vulnerability in current and past versions of Adobe Flash Player for all platforms that could enable an attacker to take control of an affected system. The vulnerability is reportedly being exploited in the wild via a Flash (.swf) file embedded in a Microsoft Excel (.xls) document delivered as an email attachment. Adobe expects to release a fix next week, but until then, be very careful of Excel files in email.