“The Apple community has-since its inception-been largely immune to nefarious hackers bent on spreading harm. If you are a Windows user, as I am, you know the routine. You complain about the latest spyware or virus attack, and Apple devotees respond with good-natured teasing-they don’t have worry about such nonsense. Well, now they do. That’s not true anymore.
Predictably, posts on various Apple-related message boards have been offering varying levels of concern, ranging from mild disappointment to utter gloom. I think this reaction is fundamentally misguided. MAC users should not be upset about this malware news; they should rejoice.
Huh? Why should the Apple community be celebrating the news? Before I explain, let me make one thing clear: I’m not advocating this kind of hacking, and certainly-as a victim of a virus attack myself not too long ago-I empathize with anyone who has been attacked. That said, this program is a milestone in computing history because the Apple community is finally large enough that it has drawn the attention of the hackers.
Here’s what happened: Last week, astute Mac users discovered a program dubbed “Opener.” This piece of code embeds itself onto Macs running OS X, the latest Apple operating system, and disables the computer’s firewall. The malware also locates and collects any…”
Entire article by Eric Hellweg is at http://www.technologyreview.com/articles/04/10/wo_hellweg102804.asp?trk=nl