by Lex Friedman, Macworld.com   Feb 23, 2012 11:20 am

Intego announced on Thursday that it has discovered more strains of the Flashback Trojan horse. The company says that “many Mac users have been infected by this malware,” especially the latest variant, Flashback.G.

Intego describes three unique methods that the Trojan horse uses to infect Macs: It attempts to exploit a pair of Java vulnerabilities in sequence, which the company says allows infection with no further user intervention. Failing those two approaches, resorts to social engineering. In that last case, the applet presents a self-signed digital certificate, falsely claiming that the certificate is “signed by Apple Inc”; if you click Continue, the malware installs itself.

To fall victim to the Flashback Trojan horse, you first need to run software. By definition, Trojan horses disguise themselves as other kinds of software, tricking the user into, say, double-clicking an icon to launch a new download—thereby infecting themselves. Note, however, that if you’re still running Snow Leopard and your Java installation isn’t current, a maliciously-coded webpage could cause the malware to install without further intervention on your part, depending on your browser’s security settings.

According to Intego, the latest Flashback.G variant can inject code into Web browsers and other applications that connect to the Internet, often causing them to crash. It attempts to sniff out usernames and passwords that you enter into many popular sites (like banking sites, Google, PayPal, and others), presumably so that the malfeasants behind the software can exploit that information in other nefarious ways.

As part of its installation process, the malware puts an invisible file in the /Users/Shared/ folder; that file’s name is variable, but it uses a .so extension. Other files the malware creates include/Users/Shared/.svcdmp, ~/.MACOSX/environment.plist, and ~/Library/Logs/vmLog. It also places a Java applet in ~/Library/Caches.

You won’t be surprised to learn that Intego’s own VirusBarrier X6 software can detect Flashback if it’s installed, and even prevent it from installing in the first place.

If you suspect you’ve already been infected, you can check by launching Terminal (in /Applications/Utilities/) and pasting in the code below, and pressing Return:

ls /Users/Shared/.*.so

If the response you see in Terminal includes “No such file or directory,” you’re in the clear. If you instead see a list of one or more files with a .so extension and no “no such file” declaration, you may well have fallen victim to the malware.

If you do find that you’re infected, removing the files referenced above or installing antivirus software like Intego’s should remove any traces of Flashback.

Updated 8:32 a.m. PT to clarify how the malware can install itself.

by Lex Friedman, Macworld.com   Dec 26, 2011 9:00 am

You’ve heard the advice countless times, but it is oh so easy to ignore: You simply must back up your Mac. If you don’t back up your files, it’s a question of when—not if!—you’ll lose something important or irreplaceable. Instead of making a hard-to-keep New Year’s resolution like losing weight or exercising more, this year resolve to do something that only takes a smidgen of willpower to get started and then mostly takes care of itself: Make—and manage—regular backups of your computer.

This isn’t new advice. Intellectually, you know should be backing up your files. It just seems like so much effort, and your hard drive seems fine anyway. So let’s make getting a reasonable backup in place as painless as possible.

Think essentials

Chris Breen went into great detail about determining just what you need to back up nearly a year ago in his piece “How to make a solid Mac backup plan.” You can get away without backing up a surprising number of files: apps from the Mac App Store, apps that you can easily redownload from elsewhere on the Web, and iOS apps. You can also skip backing up your email, so long as you use an IMAP email account (or a service like Gmail) where your messages remain stored on a remote server. Ditto for your music, if you use a service like iTunes Match. Of course, it doesn’t hurt to back up files like these—and doing so certainly makes restoring your data faster in the event of catastrophic failure—but if you’re looking to start small, you can reasonably avoid backing up such data if you’re looking to save time or hard drive space.

What’s left? Your irreplaceable documents (Word, Pages, and text docs and the like), photographs, and home movies are musts. Life gets much easier after a restore if you also backup key settings and preferences, too. But again, the biggest hurdle to ensuring that you finally stick with a New Year’s resolution is making it easy to get started. So let’s focus on keeping things simple. (If you want an approach focusing more on completeness than quick configuration, read my backup plan, or backup plans from my colleagues Kirk McElhearnand Dan Frakes.)

Easiest backup plan of all: Dropbox

So, once you decide what you need to back up, how should you do it? We sing the praises of this free syncing service fairly frequently here atMacworld, and with good reason: It’s easy, it works, and it’s ubiquitous. Still not sure what Dropbox is or how to get started? Follow these steps:

1. Go to Dropbox.com.
2. Click on the blue button to download Dropbox.
3. Install Dropbox.

That’s it. Now, there’s a Dropbox folder in your main user folder on your Mac. If all went well, that Dropbox folder should appear in the sidebar of your finder windows, too.

You get 2GB of storage space with Dropbox, gratis. If you don’t have much in the way of photos and documents to back up, that may be plenty. (If you do need more space, you can pay $99 per year for 50GB.) Move your important documents and photos to the Dropbox folder, and the service will automatically sync them to Dropbox’s servers on its own. If your hard drive goes belly up, you can simply install Dropbox again on your replacement, and the service will automatically download all your synced files.

Installing Dropbox, and keeping your most important files there, can take mere minutes. And as long as you ensure that you save your important data to that folder, you’re golden. But if you’re willing to spend a little more time and a little more cash, there are other approaches that can back you up even more completely.

Next easiest plan: Time Machine

As you probably know, you have impressive backup software built into your Mac, for free. But if you never configure Time Machine, then it can’t help you. The good news is, configuring Time Machine to back up your computer takes just a bit of time.

1. Buy or acquire an extra hard drive. (See our buying guides for external hard drives and for portable hard drives.) This is ridiculously cheap at this point; you can get at least a terabyte of storage space for less than $100. All you need is a drive that works with your Mac; USB drives are still the most affordable; Thunderbolt drives will likely be faster.
2. Connect the drive to your Mac.

Most of the time, Lion should ask you whether you’d like to use the newly-connected hard drive for Time Machine backups. Say yes, and your Mac will automatically back up your files to the drive as needed. It’s great, and it’s mostly painless. If you’ve bought a big enough drive, you’ll have a copy of everything in case of emergency. Time Machine stores incremental backups of your data in time-based snapshots. So if you updated your big presentation for work yesterday, and realize today that in fact you screwed everything up, you can use Time Machine to step back to an earlier version of that file. And you can recover the file if you accidentally delete it, too.

Time Machine’s smart enough to only back up data that’s changed; that way, instead of recopying the complete contents of your hard drive each time your Mac starts a new backup, only the updated and new files are transferred. In your main drive fails, your latest Time Machine backup should contain a nearly up-to-the-minute snapshot of how everything looked before the crash. And unlike Dropbox, Time Machine backs up pretty much everything on your Mac—you don’t need to make sure you’re putting all your important stuff in a single folder.

You can even use Time Machine to back up to remote network drives (say, drives connected to your Airport base station).

Of course, Time Machine requires that you buy that hard drive, and that you connect to it regularly. There’s another option that requires no special hardware on your end—only a monthly (or yearly) fee, and an Internet connection:

Extra safety option: CrashPlan

CrashPlan isn’t the only online backup solution out there, but it’sconsistently a favorite among theMacworld staff. For as little as $3 per month, you can back up a single computer; for as little as $6 a month, you can back up as many as ten of your family’s computers. (Those prices require paying for four years of service upfront; paying monthly incurs a a higher per-month fee.)

With CrashPlan, you needn’t worry about buying (or replacing) external hard drives, and obviously you don’t need to worry about connecting one either. As with all online backup services, CrashPlan works by backing up your files over the Internet. And since CrashPlan backs up your data on its own system, you avoid the single-point-of-failure situation that a single Time Machine backup drive creates.

You sign up for CrashPlan, pick out a plan, download the CrashPlan software—and then wait. It automatically backs up your Mac over the Internet to CrashPlan’s servers. You can launch the app and watch its progress, or just leave it closed and it will silently do its thing.

Out of sight needn’t be out mind: CrashPlan can email you or message you via Twitter with status updates on your backups—along with warnings when a computer hasn’t backed up in a few days. When you need to restore a file, you can do so via the CrashPlan app or the website. Like Time Machine, CrashPlan even backs up multiple versions versions of your files, meaning you can get at earlier copies of a document if need be. And it holds onto files you delete, too. The service offers impressive peace of mind for the price.

Don’t worry about bootable backups

None of these options—Dropbox, Time Machine, or CrashPlan—offers a means of creating a bootable backup. That is, you can’t start up your Mac with any of these options if your main hard drive fails. But that’s okay now, thanks to Lion’s Recovery Mode.

If you’re running Snow Leopard, or if you aren’t comfortable with Recovery Mode, you probably want to start making a bootable backup as well; the most popular tools for doing so are SuperDuper andCarbon Copy Cloner. But those require a smidgen more care and attention, and we want to ensure you keep your New Year’s resolution, so let’s not sweat those options this time around.

Make sure your backups work

It’s wonderful that you’ve finally started backing up, through whichever mean(s) you chose. But who’s verifying that your backups are working?

Spoiler alert: No one. Unless, that is, you do it yourself. It’s healthy to feel good about that and regularly pat yourself on the back for your forward-thinkingness. But imagine the soul-crushing defeat you’d feel were you to suffer massive data loss—only to discover that your backups weren’t actually working. TidBits editor and Macworld senior contributor Adam Engst has even proposed anInternational Verify Your Backups Day, and it’s a good idea. (This year you can set your “verify your data” iCal alarm for Friday, January 13.)

Verifying your backups is a snap: Find an important file or two, and make sure you can successfully restore it—and then open it. (Here’s how to restore a hard drive using Time Machine.)

A flawed backup is about as useful as no backup. Verifying your backup should help you sleep easy at night.

Enjoy the new year with peace of mind

New year, new you. Specifically, a you who needn’t worry about what might happen to your precious data if the unthinkable happens to your Mac’s hard drive. The best backup routines require precious little maintenance (beyond Verify Your Backups Day); they just work. Before you start crooning Auld Lang Syne, get over the hurdle. Setting up a reasonable backup strategy needn’t take much time or money—just a few minutes of focus. You’ll thank yourself later.

Perhaps you lucked out this holiday season, and instead of unwrapping an itchy sweater or a Dunkin’ Donuts gift card, you tore the wrapping paper off a brand new Mac. And perhaps this is the very first Mac that you’ve owned. Don’t be afraid of your new computer; you’re leaving behind a world of headaches, and this new Mac is your Excedrin.

Now that you own this new Mac, here are ten tasks to take care of right away. (Now, I’ve set up many new Macs in my day, and shared my new Mac setup checklist a while back. These tips are especially geared towards first-time Mac owners.)

1. Figure out a backup solution

Yep, this is step one. Setting up a backup is boring, un-fun, and doesn’t involve playing with any cool apps or doodads. But your future self will thank You Of Just Past Christmas, and with good reason: Having a good backup solution now means you won’t lose irreplaceable data later. We’ve covered numerous ways to back up your Mac with minimal fuss. Pick at least one and get started. Trust me.

2. Install Dropbox

This can dovetail pretty nicely with No. 1 above. Dropbox is a free, painless utility that not just backs up your files, but also easily syncs them to other devices. When you install Dropbox, files and folders that you drag into the Dropbox folder automatically get backed up to the Dropbox website—and they also sync to other computers or devices (like iPhones and iPads) logged into the same Dropbox account. It’s a magical solution for backing up your files, syncing them between machines, and making them available everywhere. No Mac is complete without it.

3. Tweak preferences to your liking

This is your Mac. Make it look and act that way. Fire up System Preferences (it’s in the default Dock, or accessible via the Apple menu) and go through every single pane. If you’re not sure what something does, or if you can’t see a benefit to tweaking a setting, you’re free to leave it alone, of course. But tweaking options like Highlight Color (under General), your Mac’s background image (Desktop & Screensaver), or the default alert sound (Sound -> Sound Effects) is your Cupertino-given right, so tweak you shall.

4. Master gestures

If your new Mac includes a trackpad—either because it’s a laptop with a built-in pad, or you scored a Magic Trackpad to go with your new desktop—take some time to learn about the many gestures built into Lion, your new Mac’s operating system. One of the simplest ways to discover the various gestures available is right in System Preferences, where you just were one tip ago. Once there, click on Trackpad. There, you’ll find three tabs’ worth of mouse shortcuts. Move the cursor over any of them, and you’ll get a video preview of how to trigger the gesture. Some may well improve your Mac computing experience; I, for one, love the three-finger double-tap on any word to bring up its definition.

5. Discover the Mac App Store

On a new Mac, it’s right there in your Dock—the blue circle with a stylized A inside it. The Mac App Store offers thousands of apps, and downloading and installing those apps is straightforward. Many apps are free; others require a payment, ranging from $1 to a couple hundred bucks. While you can—and likely will—find plenty of apps outside the cozy confines of the Mac App Store, browsing it is a great way to discover interesting apps, read reviews, and get a sense of the Mac software marketplace.

6. FaceTime with someone

Video chatting might not feel like the future anymore, but it’s still a delight. Perhaps no software makes it easier to start (or receive) a video call than FaceTime, which is built right into Lion. Find it in your Applications folder, or use Spotlight (the magnifying glass at the upper right of your menu bar) to search for FaceTime by typing in the first few letters of the app’s name. Now all you need is the email address or phone number of another FaceTime user. And remember, anyone running Lion or Snow Leopard, an iPhone 4 or 4S, or an iPad 2 can FaceTime with you. That’s a lot of people.

7. Download Chrome

It pains me to offer this tip; I’ve been a Safari devotee since Apple first introduced its own Web browser. But Safari 5.1 introduced some significant annoyances that made the experience of using it far less enjoyable—unless you enjoy undesired page refreshes, system-wide slowdowns, and other bugginess. Recent updates to the browser have improved the situation, but haven’t eliminated the problems. Google’s free Chrome browser isn’t flawless, but in my real-world usage, it’s faster, more reliable, and less problem-prone than Safari.

8. Make an iMovie trailer

iMovie comes included on every new Mac. (Just check your Applications folder.) Mastering the software takes patience, but you can create a great-looking pseudo movie trailer using your own video clips in just a few minutes if you follow our tutorial. Creating professional-quality trailers from your own home movies is great fun, and it’s an excellent way to get acquainted with iMovie’s more powerful features, too.

9. Record a song with GarageBand

You’ve already made a movie; composing your opus should be easy. Like iMovie, GarageBand ships free with new Macs. The app lets beginners and professionals alike create music. If you have a USB keyboard, that’ll help, but you certainly don’t need one. Start dragging music loops together—guitar parts, drum parts, and so on—and GarageBand automatically matches their pitch and tempo as needed. You can even play MIDI instruments with your mouse or keyboard (Window -> Keyboard). Create an “I Don’t Miss Windows At All” jingle and share it with your friends.

10. Clean up

Your Mac’s desktop is your work (and play) space; neatness counts. Tidy up by removing apps from your Dock that you won’t use often. To do so, quit the apps if they’re open, and then simply drag their icons out of the Dock; they’ll vanish in a puff of virtual smoke, though they’re still safely ensconced in your Applications folder, ready for you to run them again should the need arise. Also consider creating a junk drawer on your desktop, so that you can store files you’re not ready to sort there, instead of scattered all over the desktop itself.

What’s next?

You’ve made your Mac your own, you’ve created great art, and you’ve grown increasingly familiar with how to use your new computer. All you need to do now is keep exploring and learning, and perhaps subscribe to the world’s greatest Mac and Apple-centric magazine.