Opinion Spy: Second Look

For those who don't understand much.

Get It Try It

There's a potentially nasty piece of business being spread around Mac download sites. You can read all about it at the URLs below. You can also search Google News for more information.

A few points for those who get confused by such hysteria.

√ This isn't a system attack. It's social engineering. It relies on you being naïve, on you being outwitted. You have to submit your admin pass phrase for this thing to work. As most of the titles known to trojanise your system are screen savers, you're pretty much OK if you just stop to ask yourself why a bloody screen saver would need root access on your system.

√ This in no way is a reflection on the security of Mac OS X or Unix in general. Any system will be compromised if the sysop can be convinced/tricked into giving away superuser access to the system.

√ The previous article in this series gives potent clues how you can determine if you've been infected.

ls /Applications/PermissionResearch

You've been hit if you get back a listing for the above.

See Also
Learning Curve: Opinion Spy: First Look
Learning Curve: Here Comes the Opinion Spy!