snow leopard malware detection

mauhey67 wrote:

I just read an article on this site about the automatic protection provided on SL machine by Safari. That's fine but as you know the Safari version that can be installed on SL 32bit machine is no longer supported. That's to say you'd better never use Safari if you have this machine (the same for Chrome and somehow Opera. FF is ok).

I'm have no idea what article you are talking about, but the only protection provided by Safari that I'm aware of is from Google SafeBrowsing which supplies a blacklist of sites known to distribute malware or associated with phishing. It doesn't require any support from Apple to keep it running so the protection it provides is just as good as that provided by Safari in Yosemite.

Of course there are vulnerabilities with Safari itself which will never be fixed, so in that respect Snow Leopard Safari is less secure.

Apple isn't doing anything any other OS vendor doesn't do. They aren't going to waste their time and resources on a six year old OS, just the same as Microsoft isn't going to waste their time on older version of Internet Explorer.

Not that Apple doesn't create some of this user angst themselves by leaving older technology behind faster than anyone else. CD/DVD/Blu-ray drives? What are those?

But anyway, there is Firefox for SL, which you already know about and is a very good browser. Problem solved.

I remember this article and when just re-reading it I went to my Security CP in 10.6.8 and several of the options that are shown in the article are not in my latest install of SL. But I remember in earlier OS's the malware warning pop up, but never in SL. Although I am also running 10.9.5, 10.10.4 and 10.11, I work in 10.6.8 because all the software I need will only goes this far. So I use Sophos in all OS's because I get mail from people that are prone to spreading these things. Although it won't affect my machine for the most part, at least I can kill it and this is how I find out about it. Just ran Software Update and I am up-to-date.

It would seem strange that Apple would have such an inclusive page with a feature description of which it was "Last Modified" on Feb 13, 2015 and no word as to why it would not now appear in the latest install of SL. Unless this is for SL Server and Apple has failed to acknowledge it. Which wouldn't be a first.

Article CP:

Mine:

Well almost solved. The latest version of Firefox that can run on older Macs, mine is running OSX 10.6.8, is FF v.39.0. It still has issues with online video playing though and I refuse to use Safari on this older Mini due to the security issues. FF is safer than Safari by miles and miles. Video playback, especially on my favorite news websites, is awful on FF though using the old Mini. I can never seem to get it to work properly. Videos flash constantly. Must have something to do with incompatibility.

I bought a used 2011 11" Macbook Air to watch videos on, and do some other things on it too. It's running Yosemite. Safari and Firefox both work great on my Air. You can pick one up for about $300 now. Unfortunately, there is no DVD/CD/BlueRay drive on the Air, so I'm limited to using the old Mini to play those.

Yes, there will still be issues. Mozilla does the best they can to keep Firefox as current as possible for older OS's (HTML 5, for instance), but there's a limit to what they can do.

Understandably so.

Technology is moving incredible fast, as we, the homosapeins species, keep going into the future. Since the end of the 18th century, we have seen tremendous changes that kept speeding up everything, and it just keeps going faster and faster. We must learn and adapt, or die. We likely won't be slowing down in my lifetime, which I'm hoping is another 30-40 years.

It's virtually impossible to keep up with it all though, especially if you're over 35 years old. The speed of change, be it battery tech, computer OS changes, other technology advancements, social networking, climate change, etc., is simply mind-boggling. At some point, I think only those young enough to have sponge-like brains still, will be able to stay abreast of the speed of change.

All this super fast changing brings incredible innovation, longer life to humans, and answers to many problems and questions, but it also brings terrible costs in the way of personal expenses, pollution - terrible environmental degradation, health issues we didn't foresee due to many of us humans being more sedentary,food shortages, wastefulness, and not always the promises of good things that we hoped for.

So we can drop out, modify, or stay in it and suffer the consequences of our actions.

If you are implying that Apple no longer updates the "safe download sites list" that's not correct. That option was replaced with "Automatically install important security update" which I notice you do not have enabled. There was some confusion about the meaning of that so it was updated to be similar to the way newer OS X releases refer to it in the App Store Preference "Install system data files and security updates". Apple is still providing Snow Leopard users with every XProtect update, the current version of which is 88.

I refused to use Safari also, just in principle. Apple tracks us enough, so that is why I use FF, now 39.0. I just replaced my old workhorse G4 DP 1.42GHz (10.5.8) with a MacPro 2.8GHz OctaCore (10.5.8, 10.6.8, 10.10.4 & 10.11) and I had the same video problems on the G4, could not watch a thing. Now on the MacPro, I can watch anything anywhere any time using anything, even with FF 39.0 and Flash (which will die when HTML 5 takes hold). The same on my 2008 2.8GHz Core 2 Duo laptop. So as far as I have experienced, it's not FF or Flash. I can even watch Flash video using the Finder (Select-Space Bar).

mauhey67 wrote:

is the xprotect thing done automatically?

As long as you have it enabled in System Preferences->Security->General tab "Automatically install important security updates".

Is it possible to check it?

Open the Terminal app, copy and paste the following line and hit return:

defaults read /System/Library/CoreServices/CoreTypes.bundle/Contents/Resources/XProtect.meta Version

p.s. no one of you mentioned clamxav

Since I volunteer uncompensated tech support on the ClamXav Forum I could be seen as having a bias, so I refrain from making such recommendations.

I do have half a dozen A-V scanners installed, but none of them are active. I have them for testing purposes and in case there is ever a day when I feel I must use one. I have experienced Sophos stability issues two or three times over several years now for unknown reasons, and had to re-install, but since I don't use it regularly I can't properly evaluate it's problems or capabilities beyond what I've read here.

Constantly telling people that because they are older that is the reason for them having problems with 'change' & computing social networks & so on is garbage.

I am 67 and started learning about computing from the age of 20 when IBM tried to con me into becoming a programmer for them. But really only started learning a bit about them from 1979 when I became the public relations consultant for a USA computer manufacturer. The thing about that job was I had to write articles for the press and for manuals etc, all of which had to pass by the CEO. It had to be correct & so I had to learn it about first. Since then I have had a number of different IT & computing clients.

I mention all this to point out I think I am entitled to have a valid opinion on the subject. And that opinion is ... software stinks. A computer screen is simply an electronically generated replacement for a bit of paper with the added facility of being 'interactive' when you click on things.

So why should this electronic bit of paper disobey all the previous rules that applied to paper ? Like, easy to navigate, readability, sensible graphic design etc etc.

Instead ALL the difficulties people have are caused by the stupidly ignorant way originators of these electronic pages write them. They display a laughable inability to communicate and are often almost illiterate. That's it.

So when intelligent people find webpages impossible to navigate etc the users are blamed for the sheer ignorance of the illiterate people producing those pages/software and users are told they are technophobes. Technology is nothing to do with it. Technology is all about what is going on inside all the hardware & we don't need to bother with any of that at all.

And social media ? Don't make me laugh. It isn't even worth talking about it is so stupid.

My seventeen year old son is also unimpressed by all this electronically generated garbage too.