Once again, fingers are madly typing about a frightening OS X
threat. The Opener can steal your personal information and open a back
door on your computer. It might even destroy data. It was mentioned
last week on Slashdot. CNet News has done an article quoting the
Anti-Virus creators. Sounds scary, huh? Not.
It's a simple Bash script. A shell script. We're Unix, remember? And
it has to be installed by a person with root access. There are no
reports of propagation in the wild. What kind of threat is that? You
would have to install it (or someone with root or physical access to
your computer), type in your install password and allow it to run.
Unless the new trend is for trojan/virus/worm makers to go door to
door, I don't see this being a big deal.
When the malware makers create a self-installer for The Opener that
auto-emails it from person to person, I might get slightly worried. And I
might then compare it to current Windows problems. Any anti-virus maker that
wants to create a program to protect my computer should understand this
fact and mention it when being quoted in articles. Sheesh.
