PCSDesk » Apple

Java Trojan Attacks OSX

Brian Gallutia — Mon, 01 Nov 2010 16:16:21 +0000

From Ars Technica, Thursday October 28th, 2010:

A new trojan horse has cropped up that affects Mac OS X (and Windows as well), primarily disguised as a video flitting around social networking sites. When users click an infected link, a Java applet is launched that downloads multiple files, including an installer that runs automatically without users’ knowledge.

Read the full article

Apple and Big Potatoes

Brian Gallutia — Wed, 04 Aug 2010 15:46:28 +0000

Last year, I wrote an article for this site entitled “Welcome to the party Mac..” where I tried to dispel the common myth that Apple computers were impervious to malware and viral infections. My argument called the Apple platform “small potatoes” because up until the past year or two, Apple systems did not have enough market share for virus writers to focus their efforts on compromising Apple’s operating systems for profit.

With the proliferation of the iPod, iPhone and now the iPad, the “curse of popularity” now afflicts Apple’s iOS. Gizmodo is reporting on a new exploit that allows a hacker to gain total control of your Apple device by loading a compromised PDF file:

Right now, if you visit a web page and load a simple PDF file, you may give total control of your iPhone, iPod touch, or iPad to a hacker. The security bug affects all devices running iOS 3.1.2 and higher.

This security threat is particularly scary because all that is needed to infect an iOS device is a link to the PDF. No user interaction is required other than following a link or being redirected to a “malicious” PDF file.

Safeguard yourself by keeping on top of this issue and making sure that you keep your iOS devices updated with the latest security patches. It is unclear when Apple is going to be addressing this particular issue, but it is my hope that they don’t hold another press conference (ala’ the iPhone 4 antenna debacle) and decide to spend most of the time blaming Adobe for the problem ;)

Steve Jobs Hates Lefties

Brian Gallutia — Fri, 25 Jun 2010 20:07:56 +0000

In a sinister move (pun intended) by Apple’s Core of Engineers (another pun intended), it would appear that the new Apple iPhone poses a small problem to those that insist on using their left hand on a daily basis: bad reception.

Many media outlets are reporting that the iPhone’s new antenna design is flawed because if the user holds the phone in his/her left hand, the wireless 3G signal strength decreases dramatically.

So what’s a leftie to do? Well, according to Steve Jobs in one of his candid “I’ll say what I want because you’ll still by my stuff anyway” email replies, said (and I quote):

“Avoid holding it this way”

Nice.

MobileMe Outages

Brian Gallutia — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 00:34:47 +0000

Today multiple customers reported issues with Apple’s MobileMe service in that they could either not get their emails or emails happened to get “stuck” in their accounts and never juggled properly to their mobile devices.

PCS confirmed that there was indeed a problem with the service as reported on the MobileMe web site.

If you own an iPhone or Macintosh system and experience issues with MobileMe from time to time, we invite you to check MobileMe’s status page at..

http://www.apple.com/support/mobileme/

..before making any changes to your personal configurations. If problems persist, feel free to contact us for assistance.