Latest Mac trojan spreads through Microsoft Word documents

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Comments

  • Reply 21 of 65
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Hudson1 View Post


    So I guess it raises this question: Why is Java able to reach into the bowels of my computer for things I don't think it should be able to reach? .







    That is because OSX is inherently insecure.
  • Reply 22 of 65
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by d-range View Post


    Maybe you should educate yourself about Java a little more before you make statements like that, because the piece you quoted in your reply is full of factual errors.



    Java as a programming language is garbage. Unless you are masochistic, there are plenty of alternatives you can use that are better in every aspect imaginable except ubiquity.



    How cute. Poor little bunny doesn't like Java. As opposed to what, one wonders ...
  • Reply 23 of 65
    freerangefreerange Posts: 1,597member
    MSFT and Adobe, the gifts that keep on giving!
  • Reply 24 of 65
    freerangefreerange Posts: 1,597member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by I am a Zither Zather Zuzz View Post


    That is because OSX is inherently insecure.



    Wow! You have over 1,200 posts since just Januaty of this year? An automated troll in our midst! And a clueless one at that.
  • Reply 25 of 65
    d-ranged-range Posts: 396member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by canoeberry View Post


    How cute. Poor little bunny doesn't like Java. As opposed to what, one wonders ...



    As opposed to about anything else, including the many Java spin-offs that use just the JVM and get rid of the rest of the language so they don't have to deal with all the bone-headed things about Java. You don't think these exist for the sole reason that so many people hate everything about Java except the JVM (which is, in fact, pretty decent)?



    But hey, if you like writing lots of boilerplate code, hate closures or first-class lambda functions, love to deal with the arbitrary distinction between primitives data types and the ones that have java.lang classes, enjoy littering your code with compiler intrinsics just to shut it up when you want to compile anything that uses generics or autoboxing against legacy code that doesn't, if you really think it's a good idea to make every.single.thing an object (well, except integers, chars and doubles, obviously), don't mind having to wade through piles of deprecated API's that are still part of the core language (what's the standard Java UI library of the day today? AWT, Swing, SWT, or do we have something 'better' already?), are absolutely thrilled to catch all the millions of checked exceptions thrown by library methods (as opposed to just catching java.lang.Exception which most Java programmers do so they don't have to write millions of lines of code just to handle exceptions, effectively killing the whole idea behind exception handling in general and checked exceptions in particular), and would rather use something as obtuse and inconvenient as JNI just to interact with some piece of code that was not written in Java, be my guest.



    Do you have any arguments yourself, or are you just a little butt-hurt that someone on the internet does not like Java? How about you give me 1 (one) reason why I should like Java more than one of the many alternatives that I could use instead of it.
  • Reply 26 of 65
    mstonemstone Posts: 11,510member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by auxio View Post


    Let's clear up the misconceptions here:



    [...]

    Regardless, to mindlessly maintain that Java is the problem is to only look skin deep.



    Regardless, unless you need it for a specific application, you should probably disable it.



    The Java Preferences utility is in /Applications/Utilities; uncheck the boxes next to the versions listed in the General tab.
  • Reply 26 of 65
    MacProMacPro Posts: 19,718member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by jameskatt2 View Post


    If you never install Java - you don't expose yourself to these trojan malware.



    Apple no longer installs Java on Macs. Java is not present in iOS.



    Java is a third party platform - like Flash - that opens up security holes in Mac OS X.





    One snag is you can't run Adobe CS5 or CS6 without Java though (and who knows what else) and many of us need Adobe products.



    By the way I know this as I deleted all Java items this morning as an experiment. I had to re download and install it after I found Photoshop would no longer run.



    I discovered to my surprise many apps are remarkably faster now, PS CS5, Aperture to name only two, load in the blink of an eye and seem to run many times faster now. An unexpected side effect!
  • Reply 28 of 65
    ktappektappe Posts: 823member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by canoeberry View Post


    How cute. Poor little bunny doesn't like Java. As opposed to what, one wonders ...



    If you read his post instead of getting snarky, you'd have seen he specifically mentioned Scala. Please read before posting.
  • Reply 29 of 65
    MacProMacPro Posts: 19,718member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by FreeRange View Post


    Wow! You have over 1,200 posts since just Januaty of this year? An automated troll in our midst! And a clueless one at that.



    Unfortunately, quoting trolls doesn't help. Those that have put them in ignore lists sadly get to see replies although I see no reason why the AI database couldn't exclude replies containing excluded users.
  • Reply 30 of 65
    mstonemstone Posts: 11,510member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by digitalclips View Post


    One snag is you can't run Adobe CS5 or CS6 without Java though (and who knows what else) and many of us need Adobe products.



    Really? CS5.5 seems to run fine without Java. Is there a specific application function that you have found that will not run?
  • Reply 31 of 65
    kpluckkpluck Posts: 500member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by jameskatt2 View Post


    If you never install Java - you don't expose yourself to these trojan malware.



    Apple no longer installs Java on Macs. Java is not present in iOS.



    Java is a third party platform - like Flash - that opens up security holes in Mac OS X.



    True except that Apple itself is the company supplying/developing the software should you decide you need it so it is their responsibility to fix things like this.



    -kpluck
  • Reply 32 of 65
    MacProMacPro Posts: 19,718member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by mstone View Post


    Really? CS5.5 seems to run fine without Java. Is there a specific application function that you have found that will not run?



    I deleted all Java items (I used Finder Find 'Java' and trashed all items it found) and re booted. On launching PS I got a dialog stating "Adobe CS5 programs cannot load without Java, do you wish to download it?" I did and by the way, now my Mac is many, many times faster!!! Got to do more tests but Adobe products launch instantly (i7 MBP) whereas they used to take quite a while to load.
  • Reply 33 of 65
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Flash_beezy View Post


    Pages ftw, open office, or even google docs.



    ^^^ This! Changed over to iWork for everything, and haven't looked back once. Everything converts and exports fine; at least for me and my needs.
  • Reply 34 of 65
    mstonemstone Posts: 11,510member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by digitalclips View Post


    I deleted all Java items (I used Finder Find 'Java' and trashed all items it found) and re booted. On launching PS I got a dialog stating "Adobe CS5 programs cannot load without Java, do you wish to download it?" I did and by the way, now my Mac is many, many times faster!!! Got to do more tests but Adobe products launch instantly (i7 MBP) whereas they used to take quite a while to load.



    I just used the Java Preference app to disable it and all the CS5.5 apps that I use regularly run fine. Perhaps Adobe doesn't really need it all the time but looks for it to be sure it is available when/if needed. By disabling it in the preferences it is still on the system, it just can't be used. In the event that a function requiring Java is requested the dialog prompt would probably say something like Java is currently turned off please enable it to use this function.
  • Reply 35 of 65
    hudson1hudson1 Posts: 800member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by tdmelvin View Post


    ^^^ This! Changed over to iWork for everything, and haven't looked back once. Everything converts and exports fine; at least for me and my needs.



    Unfortunately, there are a lot of advanced business spreadsheets in Excel which either don't work at all with Numbers, OpenOffice, etc., or don't work well enough to be usable.
  • Reply 36 of 65
    nagrommenagromme Posts: 2,834member
    I hope OpenOffice isn?t affected Although I need it maybe 5 times a year anyway.



    This Java thing sounds cool, though. I?m gonna have to install that and try it out!
  • Reply 37 of 65
    So am I ok if I'm using Microsoft for Mac 2011? I just did a service pack update of some sort this past week and my mom is getting her new iMac set up with Microsoft office 2011 tomorrow. I'd hate to introduce her to Apple with this this kind of sh*t going on.
  • Reply 38 of 65
    drdoppiodrdoppio Posts: 1,132member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by SolipsismX View Post


    You have to wonder what's going on with Android OS. Aren't most of their Google Play apps Java-based?



    Haha, very funny.



    For those that didn't get the joke, Android has nothing to do with this -- it has neither the JVM, nor MS Office. This is a Mac OS problem exclusively.
  • Reply 39 of 65
    sockrolidsockrolid Posts: 2,789member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by AppleInsider View Post


    A new version of a backdoor trojan for Apple's OS X operating system takes advantage of an exploit in Microsoft Word to spread. [...]



    New version, ancient technique. Microsoft Word macro viruses have been around since the '90s.



    Thanks again for architecting a malware-friendly app, Mr. Gates.
  • Reply 40 of 65
    nccyrnccyr Posts: 12member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by d-range View Post


    Maybe you should educate yourself about Java a little more before you make statements like that, because the piece you quoted in your reply is full of factual errors.



    That said, I know a fair bit of Java myself, having written somewhere in the neighbourhood of some 300K lines of Java code (rough guesstimate) spread over different projects and problem domains, over a timeframe of about 15 years, and I absolutely ff-ing hate it. It's probably one of the worst programming languages you can use today, and if it weren't for the fact that it garnered such a large following and billions of lines of legacy code, nobody would ever use it voluntarily. There's a reason people felt the need to create something like Scala.



    Java as a programming language is garbage. Unless you are masochistic, there are plenty of alternatives you can use that are better in every aspect imaginable except ubiquity.



    Thank you for eloquently expressing my feelings towards Java so succinctly. It is the COBOL of the 21st century.
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