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Category Archives: Mac OS X

Am I infected by the Flashback Trojan?

John C. Welch (one third of the Angry Mac Bastards podcast) has put together a simple script you can use to check if your Mac is infected by the Flashback Trojan:

Note, this is a very simple script. If your home directory path isn’t /Users/<shortusername>/ you’ll get false positives. But if you’re astute enough to have network homes and homes on random volumes, etc., you’re astute enough to run the F-Secure check without my help.

The recently discovered Flashback Trojan takes advantage of vulnerabilities found in Java on OS X. Apple released an update this week to patch the issue. If you haven’t already, run Software Update now on your Mac and get yourself patched.

Trojan-Downloader:OSX/Flashback.K connects to a remote site to download its payload; on successful infection, the malware modifies targeted webpages displayed in the web browser.

It has been claimed that more than 500,000 Mac users have been infected with this trojan. But I have yet to find it on any of these machines I manage, and neither have any of my friends, colleagues, or people I follow on social networking sites.

 
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Posted by on April 6, 2012 in Apple, Mac OS X, Security

 

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File system choices in Mac OS X

I’m setting up a new external hard drive to connect to a media server and I need to decide which filesystem to format the drive to. It doesn’t matter which format a hard drive is formatted to from the factory (FAT32 for me on this occasion), the option exists to wipe the drive and use a different format right inside OS X. Formatting can be done with the Mac OS X Disk Utility, found in the /Applications/Utilities folder. Here are the formatting options with advantages/disadvantages listed: Read the rest of this entry »

 
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Posted by on April 6, 2012 in Mac OS X

 

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How to print emails in Apple Mail without the headers

If you ever need to print an email from Apple Mail, you may run into the frustrating lack of a print option to opt-out of printing the headers and footers. These print options exist when printing web pages from Safari, so it’s a little baffling why Apple still hasn’t implemented the same simple functionality in version 5.1 of Mail that ships with Mac OS X Lion.

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Posted by on January 13, 2012 in Apple, Mac OS X

 

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Apple releases Mac OS X Lion Preview 2 to developers

Apple yesterday released the 2nd preview build of its upcoming operating system Mac OS X Lion to developers. As with the first build, the software is delivered to developers via a download from the App Store. And you’ll need to head over to the Apple Developer Member Center first to obtain a redemption code to obtain the software. You are also required to install a small update from the Mac OS X Software Update application first, before you can install the latest build on your machine.

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Posted by on March 31, 2011 in Mac OS X

 

Mac OS X turns X years today

For eight of its years I barely knew it existed, so it’s hard for me to believe that today Mac OS X celebrates its 10th birthday. Dan Moren over at MacWorld.com looks at what it all means, and what the operating system has become for more than one hundred million people using it. He writes:

“To me, there’s no greater testament of Mac OS X’s success than my own friends and family. In the ’90s, the majority were PC users and even those few that had stuck by the Mac soon moved to what they saw as the greener pastures of PCs—if for no other reason than they were far more affordable than the Macs of that age. But now, ten years after the release of Mac OS X, they’re far more likely to be packing an aluminum MacBook than a cheap plastic Dell.”

As someone who had been using solely cheaper Windows PCs since version 3.1 up until two years ago, I can definitely relate to that statement.

 
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Posted by on March 24, 2011 in Mac OS X

 
 
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