Sources Indicate Apple's Malware Removal Tool Does Nothing...True or False?

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Level 1

8 points

Sources Indicate Apple's Malware Removal Tool Does Nothing...True or False?

Found this today...concerning on multiple levels...I don't believe that my computer is infected, but the fact that Apple might be releasing what is essentially a "placebo" Trojan removal program is disturbing. Here's the link: http://betanews.com/2012/04/21/apples-flashback-trojan-tool-fixes-nothing/

It's possible that the author used the statement in the title as a way to get user's to read the article, as it doesn't provide much information or evidence supporting their claim. Any one whose found similar articles or knows for sure if the Flashback Removal Tool does work or not please reply.

Thanks.

P.S. ALWAYS check URL links and make sure you trust the person giving them to you. In my experience, not only can the text the link is attached to be misleading, but even the link shown when hovering over the link or checking it's properties can simply redirect you. Probably the safest way I can think of is to copy the text and/or link into Google first and check their preview window (click the two arrows pointing right next to the results) to see if the site is the one you were expecting.

MacBook Pro (15-inch Mid 2010), Mac OS X (10.7.3)

Posted on Apr 21, 2012 3:06 PM

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Answer 1

Linc Davis

Level 10

209,547 points

Apr 21, 2012 3:31 PM in response to jpcguy89

To answer the question in the title of your message: False.

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Answer 2

thomas_r.

Level 7

31,989 points

Apr 21, 2012 4:39 PM in response to jpcguy89

The author of that article was not even remotely implying that Apple had released a "placebo." You are putting words in his mouth that he did not say.

What the author was saying was that the release of Apple's updates that remove Flashback are seemingly not having an effect on the number of infected machines. However, there are a couple points to consider relating to that:

The vulnerabilities initially used by Flashback had been fixed by Apple updates that were released long before the outbreak. The fact that anyone got infected by those initial variants at all is revealing. Many people don't install updates. And it stands to reason that if you didn't install those updates months ago, you probably haven't installed the Flashback removal update either.
None of these counts are anything but very rough estimates. They may be counting different variants, which means comparing counts isn't very meaningful. And they're all probably low. The number of infected Macs is almost certainly dropping, but due to issues like the one mentioned in #1, it will take a very long time for it to drop to an insignificant number.

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