Over the past several weeks, Apple’s OS has been hit by some pretty inventive malware that has been tricking a large number of users into thinking their systems have been infected by viruses. This has shown up as MacDefender or MacProtector. We’ve had a few articles in our newsletter describing how to remove the software if you’ve inadvertently infected your system. What hasn’t been mentioned are the steps Apple has taken to try to combat this attack.
If you’re running 10.6, you should have gotten several security updates with virus definitions in them that will enable your computer to protect itself against this particular trojan. There are some options in the Security preference pane that need to be turned on to take advantage of this. They should be turned on by default but it’s good practice to just visually confirm these settings to ensure that your system is safe.
If you go to the Security preference pane and click on the General tab you should have “Automatically update safe downloads list” checked off. This will enable your system to be updated without having to download a new Security Update. I have read reports of a bug with this feature with a very small set of users who are not having the virus definitions pushed to their computer within 24 hours as it should be. I haven’t read any report of an official response from Apple about this bug and I haven’t been able to replicate it myself.
For those of you who don’t run your Software Update when it says that there are new downloads, it’s a good idea to have this feature checked off. I recommend it for everyone, however, and for those of you who don’t want Apple to have that level of authority over your system, just be sure to regularly run your Software Update and you should be fine.