Mac OS X threats at VB 2009

Methusela CEBRIAN FERRER did a great job presenting at VB2009 on the Mac OS X topic.

Methusela Cebrian Ferrer.

The presentation was solid, underlying the motives and methods of infections for the different Mac Malware threats. The only glitch happened when the Mac she was using to present froze and then the keynotes program crashed. The audience was a little shocked for a minute until somebody made a joke about getting a PC instead.

There have actually been rumors about somebody in the conference trying to hack into Macs. Is that possible? Well, certainly with some many security professionals carrying their laptops, there is a lot of information worth stealing. After all we are all on the same Wireless network and intercepting communications is definitely possible.

Anyway, the conversation went on after for a little while. I chatted with Meths, as Graham Cluley had just finished congratulating her. Some folks (Philippe and Jack) from Intego (a French company who makes a really good Mac security product called VirusBarrier) were there as well. Those guys actually were the first to name what we now know as Jahlav, RSPlug. Very soon after a big AV company (which will remain nameless) sort of took their finding as if they were the one discovering it.

It is quite unfortunate that Intego is not listed on Virus Total as they have probably one of the best security product for the Mac. According to Philippe, they have more than a thousand RSPlug (Jahlav) samples (that includes variants). Anyway, I have been promised a command line version for Linux so that I can do some testing before blogging and saying that no one detects this or that threat

That concludes a well packed second day at VB 2009.

Jerome Segura