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PBX My name is Paul Bissex, and e-scribe.com is my consulting business. I build web applications using as much open source software as possible. From September to June I teach web design and other important non-photographic professional skills to photographers. In the '90s I wrote technology commentary and reviews for magazines, newspapers, and web publications, including Wired, Salon.com, FamilyPC, the late lamented Web Review, and the Chicago Tribune. Feel free to email me.

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I'm co-authoring a book, "Python Web Development with Django", with Jeff Forcier and Wesley Chun. It will be published by Prentice Hall in July 2008, but is available for pre-ordering on Amazon now.

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This site is built on a fresh trunk checkout of Django, running on Python 2.5.1, served by Apache and mod_python. The database is SQLite. The operating system is FreeBSD, on a VPS hosted at Johncompanies.com. Comment-spam protection by Akismet. Vintage topo imagery from the Maptech archive.

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Copyright 2008
by Paul Bissex
and E-Scribe New Media

The dawn of OS X malware

sign It's been almost five years since the release of OS X 10.0.0, and along the way there's been very little to worry about in the way of malware. That changed last week with the announcement of a trojan that propagates via iChat in a semi-automated way, then a Java worm that attempts to disseminate itself via Bluetooth.

Both of these are relatively innocuous, but there's not much standing in the way of copycat efforts with more dangerous payloads.

It's a good time to get familiar with ClamXav, the open source anti-virus package.

Saturday, February 18th, 2006
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2 comments

Some related posts: MacBook wireless security exploit fracas primer • RapidWeaver spamming vulnerability • Dangerous installers
• Comment from Matt Rose, 1 day later

OS X malware? It's a social engineering hack, if anything at all.

The first: 1. It doesn't disguise the fact that it's an application, other than saying it's a tarball of pictures. 2. It asks for your password to install itself. 3. If you're not an admin user, it does nothing.

malware usually uses some kind of trickery to install itself, other than REALLY dumb users.

The second hasn't actually been seen in the wild, and expires on thursday.

I realize that this is something of a huge deal for a platform that hasn't seen an attack yet, but if this is anywhere near the cream of the crop for black-hat exploits, I'm still not worried.

• Comment from Paul, 1 day later

That's the thing -- I don't think these get anywhere near what a more determined, careful, and/or mean perpetrator might accomplish. My advice about installing ClamXav is definitely about the (presumed) next wave, not this one.

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