K’s Weblog

Welcome to this week’s edition of the Mac Lab Update for Global Geek #68.

Off the top, I’m going to start with a couple of Mac security items.

Trojan.Mac
The first is a new Trojan affecting Mac OS X. OSX.RSPlug.A is a trojan that buries itself in your OS X installation and redirects you to porn and phishing sites while you’re browsing the net. This is done by forcing your computer to read DNS information from some less than reputable sources.

This is far from the nastiest trojan I’ve ever seen, despite some mac-pundits who seem to feel that “This is really bad. Really.” It doesn’t damage any files, and only messes with some settings that can be relatively easily restored.

The second is the report on the McAfee Avert labs blog stating that several other fake codec sites have been popping up with the Puper family of malware. This fake codec that messes with your system settings has been plaguing Windows since 2005, but is now making it’s way to the Mac Platform.

Now, far be it for me to get up on my soapbox… aw who am I kidding.

<rant>
This is the latest in a series of examples of people who are starting to dabble in the Mac Exploit business. Is it true that only a minuscule percentage of threats against desktop computers can hurt the mac? yes. But lets keep in mind that only a minuscule percentage of all the threats created are _targeted_ at the mac. As the popularity of the mac platform increases, and more vulnerable targets are created, mark my words: We _will_ see more Mac Exploits in 2008.
</rant>

Add to this a story that broke this week with regards to the firewall that ships along with the new package. A review on by Heise Security in the UK pointed out several significant flaws in the setup, configuration and default settings that come with OS X Leopard. The final verdict of this review is that “Mac OS X Leopard firewall failed every test.”

So for those of you who think that the Mac is invulnerable, you may want to reconsider relying on Security by Obscurity.

OpaqueMenuBar
Last week, during our Leopard overview, I mentioned that the Leopard Menu Bar is now semi-transparent resulting in some extreme cases, in readability issues with menubar text. Eternal Storms Software has put out a quick little application called OpaqueMenuBar to take care of this annoying little “feature”. I tried this one out and it did perform as promised… but I removed it in a heartbeat. Why?

1. It’s a TSR. Terminate and Stay Resident. It doesn’t just change the menu bar and terminate, it sits there and runs in the background. Ew. I feel like I’m back in the DOS days.
2. When I double-clicked the program it didn’t appear to do anything… I had to go and change my background for the change to take effect.
3. The solid menubar that it enables isn’t the metallic-grey colour of the rest of OS X… it’s WHITE, with black writing. Welcome back to the B&W version of Mac OS System 7…

DockDoctor
The other issue I discussed with regards to the new Look of Leopard is the new 3-D Glass-Shelf dock. Last week I already wanted to get rid of it, and apparently I wasn’t the only one. I found no less than a half-dozen dashboard widgets and applications to swap your 3D-Dock for a 2D version. I even posted the command-line fix to my own blog last week.

Intermind Media’s DockDoctor is an example of one of these. Pick a dock, and do the restart. This really could have been done as a single button, but maybe that’ll be adjusted in a future version.

Here are some of the other iterations of this idea that I found this week:

• DockSwitcher
• Dock Enhancer

Last up this week a non-Leopard item. iVol is a utility that allows you to adjust your system volume by sliding the scroll wheel on your mouse. To adjust the volume up or down on your computer, click the wheel on the mouse, and then scroll it. There’s also an option to Shift-Scroll option as well. To toggle the mute function you can also double-click the wheel. iVol is a free application for both Mac OS X and Windows.

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