NASA is monitoring debris in space moving in the vicinity of the international space station and the Shuttle Discovery docked with it, officials said late Wednesday.
China tries to calm unease over rare earths curbs
A Chinese official tried to calm unease about curbs on exports of rare earths used in clean energy products and superconductors, saying Thursday that sales will continue but must be limited to reduce damage to China's environment.
MacChat: Don’t panic over Snow Leopard’s virus scanner
THE Mac is still virus-free, right? If that’s so, why does the new Mac OS X Snow Leopard come with a built-in virus scanner?
It all depends on your definition of a virus.
It’s true that on the Mac there are still no self-installing, self-propagating viruses “in the wild” – the type that cause the most grief for Windows users. The Mac’s security protocol requires that any software installed is authenticated by the user.
But this makes the user the weakest link, meaning a Mac, like any PC, is vulnerable to malware that the user is tricked into installing.
These trojans are hidden within, or disguised as, legitimate downloads and once installed can wreak havoc on the system like any other virus.
Security software maker Intego last week revealed that Snow Leopard, released on Friday, had a built-in scanner that checked downloaded software for any signs of malware such as Trojans.
When installing downloaded software in Mac OS X Leopard, the user is reminded of the potential security threat of internet downloads and asked if they want to proceed.
Snow Leopard goes a step further, checking the download for any known Mac malware. Presumably Snow Leopard updates will now carry the latest Mac malware definitions.
Intego said that with the growing popularity of Macs, malware was increasing, prompting Snow Leopard’s added security measures.
Critics have seized on the virus scanner as an admission that the Mac isn’t as secure as Apple makes out, and trotted out the “security through obscurity” myth; that virus writers haven’t bothered with the Mac because of its small market share.
But there are millions more Mac users today than there were in the days of the classic Mac OS and much less Mac malware due to the secure Unix-based OS X.
Macs still ship with their firewall turned off by default, because the Mac is still safe from viruses that attempt to install themselves.
As always, the best defence for any Mac user is common sense. If you avoid dodgy file-sharing sites and refuse to install any old package that’s sent to you, you’ll be reasonably safe and can probably continue to get away without any additional anti-virus software.
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