Apple accidentally Approved a piece of Malware to Run on MacOS

[Sandro Linux]

Summary

Apple accidentally gave notarization certificates to a piece of adware called Slayer (letting it run on Macs) but Apple found out and revoked Slayer’s notarization certificates.

 

Quotes

Quote

Student Peter Dantini discovered the notarized version of Shlayer while navigating to the homepage of the popular open source Mac development tool Homebrew. Dantini accidentally typed something slightly different than brew.sh, the correct URL. The page he landed on redirected a number of times to a fake Adobe Flash update page. Curious about what malware he might find, Dantini downloaded it on purpose. To his surprise, macOS popped up its standard warning about programs downloaded from the internet, but didn't block him from running the program. 

 

My thoughts

I think this will make people more wary of Mac software and maybe question the security of Apple’s products.

 

Sources

https://www.wired.com/story/apple-approved-malware-macos-notarization-shlayer/

[BobVonBob]

5 minutes ago, Sandro Linux said:

Quotes

Quote

 Include a quote from the article that explains the news in a bit more detail. Don't quote the whole article, but it should be enough to give the reader a reasonable idea about what's going on. 

 

Dude did you even try?

[Sandro Linux]

4 minutes ago, BobVonBob said:

Dude did you even try?

Sorry I updated it to include a quote

[pythonmegapixel]

Hopefully this will ward off the "aPpLe'S rEsTrIcTiOn'S mEaN nO vIrUsEs" brigade, though I doubt it

[Sandro Linux]

Just now, pythonmegapixel said:

Hopefully this will ward off the "aPpLe'S rEsTrIcTiOn'S mEaN nO vIrUsEs" brigade, though I doubt it

I hope so too. I have a Mac and I run Bitdefender on it.

[Guest]

something something low effort apple worm pun blah blah something something

[AndreiArgeanu]

lmao, it's apple what do you expect? A competent company that cares about their customers?

[pythonmegapixel]

9 minutes ago, AndreiArgeanu said:

lmao, it's apple what do you expect? A competent company that cares about their customers?

I think if I bought an apple from a supermarket, the supermarket would care more about my experience than Apple would if I bought a computer from them...

[StDragon]

8 minutes ago, AndreiArgeanu said:

lmao, it's apple what do you expect? A competent company that cares about their customers?

Ahh yes, the Business Life Cycle. Let see where Apple is at shall we?

 

1. Launch

2. Growth

3. Restructure

4.  Maturity

5. Decline

 

Based on the above, I say Apple is in the Maturity phase. That means, decline will be inevitable if Apple loses focus on what captured market share in the first place; consumer support and satisfaction. Anyone can make a phone beyond that.

[AndreiArgeanu]

Just now, StDragon said:

Ahh yes, the Business Life Cycle. Let see where Apple is at shall we?

 

1. Launch

2. Growth

3. Restructure

4.  Maturity

5. Decline

 

Based on the above, I say Apple is in the Maturity phase. That means, decline will be inevitable if Apple loses focus on what captured market share in the first place; consumer support and satisfaction. Anyone can make a phone beyond that.

Does this life cycle consider the customers that'll throw money at everything apple makes regardless of quality?

[Sandro Linux]

1 minute ago, AndreiArgeanu said:

Does this life cycle consider the customers that'll throw money at everything apple makes regardless of quality?

No

[Ashley MLP Fangirl]

i run antivirus on my Mac so 

[Catsrules]

Quote

"Notarization is not App Review," the company wrote. "The Apple notary service is an automated system that scans your software for malicious content, checks for code-signing issues, and returns the results to you quickly."

 

Looks like as long as your software can pass a virus check your good to go.

[Sandro Linux]

5 minutes ago, Catsrules said:

 

Looks like as long as your software can pass a virus check your good to go.

Yeah but if they lock down Mac OS like IOS I would stop using Macs

[Franck]

24 minutes ago, Sandro Linux said:

No

Zombie stage are rarely part of business plan unfortunately

[Catsrules]

1 minute ago, Sandro Linux said:

Yeah but if they lock down Mac OS like IOS I would stop using Macs

My bet is this is where Apple is headed unfortunately. They want that sweet sweet 30% off all software sales on their platform.

[Sandro Linux]

1 minute ago, Catsrules said:

My bet is this is where Apple is headed unfortunately. They want that sweet sweet 30% off all software sales on their platform.

Yeah I know. I hope they don’t but I know they may. I will just buy other laptops instead if they do.

[Catsrules]

2 minutes ago, Sandro Linux said:

Yeah I know. I hope they don’t but I know they may. I will just buy other laptops instead if they do.

Or just throw Linux/Windows on the existing hardware.

[pythonmegapixel]

3 minutes ago, Sandro Linux said:

Yeah I know. I hope they don’t but I know they may. I will just buy other laptops instead if they do.

I think Windows is probably headed that way, sadly.

 

Unix-like systems, as fantastic as they, simply don't have the support behind them at the moment to step in as the default for typical consumer use. And as long as Microsoft and Apple have their duopoly, they'll abuse it.

[Sandro Linux]

2 minutes ago, Catsrules said:

Or just throw Linux/Windows on the existing hardware.

I would do that

[Sandro Linux]

1 minute ago, pythonmegapixel said:

I think Windows is probably headed that way, sadly.

 

Unix-like systems, as fantastic as they, simply don't have the support behind them at the moment to step in as the default for typical consumer use. And as long as Microsoft and Apple have their duopoly, they'll abuse it.

If I do switch from Mac OS I am going to switch to Linux because I like Unix based operating systems and don’t want to pay Microsoft £100 just for the privilege of using a worse operating system

[Moonzy]

1 minute ago, Sandro Linux said:

don’t want to pay Microsoft £100

you dont have to pay microsoft to use it

[Sandro Linux]

Just now, Moonzy said:

you dont have to pay microsoft to use it

Yeah but I don’t want to have a watermark on my desktop and don’t like the background

[Moonzy]

1 minute ago, Sandro Linux said:

Yeah but I don’t want to have a watermark on my desktop and don’t like the background

there are way cheaper keys out there

 

or go to a scrap shop and ask for a broken laptop, win 7 laptop have keys

 

i have a ton of those

[pythonmegapixel]

15 minutes ago, Moonzy said:

or go to a scrap shop and ask for a broken laptop, win 7 laptop have keys

Yeah but not win10 keys. The free upgrade program stopped years ago, and even if it hadn't, this doesn't solve the problem that the world has become too dependent on a buggy, closed-source piece of software under the control of a single company who could decide to stop supporting it, lock it down or break it at any moment.

 

We really need to be reconsidering how much trust we put in companies such as Microsoft, Apple and Google.