{"id":811,"date":"2018-01-12T07:17:02","date_gmt":"2018-01-12T12:17:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/tech.creed3.com\/?p=811"},"modified":"2018-01-12T07:17:02","modified_gmt":"2018-01-12T12:17:02","slug":"macs-dont-get-viruses-think-again","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tech.creed3.com\/?p=811","title":{"rendered":"Macs Don&#8217;t Get Viruses! Think Again."},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img decoding=\"async\" style=\"margin: 0 4px 0 4px;\" alt=\"\" src=\"images\/AppleSkullBones.gif\" width=\"120\" align=\"left\" border=\"0\" \/>As it turns out I&#8217;m a little late to this party, sort of. &nbsp;Being a Windows convert I have used antivirus apps on my Macs from day one in spite of all the &#8220;experts&#8221; shouting &#8220;Macs Don&#8217;t Get Viruses!&#8221; and berating those who choose to use an antivirus app or two on their Macs. &nbsp;I use them, and basically don&#8217;t consciously worry about it.<!--more--><\/p>\n<p>The party I&#8217;m late to is that of a real, authentic, honest-to-pete, Mac malware not only having been discovered but confirmed as real and also quite old, having been around for some time. &nbsp;As I said I run the antivirus apps and don&#8217;t worry about it. &nbsp;Why? &nbsp;Because I know that what any man can create, another can poison and nothing is safe.<\/p>\n<p>I discovered this quite by accident just yesterday while browsing news headlines, and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theindychannel.com\/news\/national\/north-royalton-hacker-indicted-developed-fruitfly-malware-to-spy-on-thousands-of-people\" rel=\"noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Prolific hacker from Ohio indicted, developed &#8216;Fruitfly&#8217; malware to spy on thousands<\/a> caught my eye. &nbsp;I discovered in the article that this guy, actually a kid at the time, created the &#8216;Fruitfly&#8217; malware which <em>infects Macs<\/em>. &nbsp;What?! &nbsp;But no such thing exists [cue eye roll]. &nbsp;This set me off on an expedition to ferret out what ever info I could about this. &nbsp;There isn&#8217;t a lot being said about it but I did happen to find <a href=\"https:\/\/blog.malwarebytes.com\/threat-analysis\/2017\/01\/new-mac-backdoor-using-antiquated-code\/\" rel=\"noopener\" target=\"_blank\">this post by Malwarebytes<\/a> dating back a year ago. &nbsp;That is just one of the apps I utilize, which is why I don&#8217;t worry about such things.<\/p>\n<p>Apparently this bit of malware would, among other nefarious things, silently watch people using their built-in web cams. &nbsp;This is also why I keep a bit of tape over all my web cams. &nbsp;Anyway, further digging on this lead me to <a href=\"https:\/\/objective-see.com\/index.html\" rel=\"noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Objective-See<\/a> and their fabulous app <a href=\"https:\/\/objective-see.com\/products\/oversight.html\" rel=\"noopener\" target=\"_blank\">OverSight<\/a> which &#8220;monitors a mac&#8217;s mic and webcam, alerting the user when the internal mic is activated, or whenever a process accesses the webcam&#8221;. &nbsp;COOL! &nbsp;And it&#8217;s about time someone did this. &nbsp;Even better is this monitor is free, as are all of his apps. &nbsp;This guy is doing some pretty cool stuff where security is concerned. &nbsp;If you use Macs you should go check out his apps and familiarize yourself with the work he&#8217;s doing. &nbsp;If you don&#8217;t use Macs, well, you probably should.<\/p>\n<p>So there you go experts. &nbsp;Shut up and get yourself some antivirus monitoring for your Macs already.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>As it turns out I&#8217;m a little late to this party, sort of. &nbsp;Being a Windows convert I have used antivirus apps on my Macs from day one in spite of all the &#8220;experts&#8221; shouting &#8220;Macs Don&#8217;t Get Viruses!&#8221; and berating those who choose to use an antivirus app or two on their Macs. &nbsp;I [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[19],"tags":[68,38,66,67],"class_list":["post-811","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-mac","tag-antivirus","tag-mac","tag-malware","tag-virus"],"views":1804,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tech.creed3.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/811","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tech.creed3.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tech.creed3.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tech.creed3.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tech.creed3.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=811"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/tech.creed3.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/811\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tech.creed3.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=811"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tech.creed3.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=811"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tech.creed3.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=811"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}