About Me

PBX I'm Paul Bissex, and e-scribe.com is my consulting business. I build web applications using open source software, especially Django. I teach photographers web design and professional skills. In the '90s I did graphic design for newspapers and magazines. Then I wrote technology commentary and reviews for Wired, Salon.com, Chicago Tribune, and lots of little places you've never heard of. Feel free to email me.

Book

I'm co-author of "Python Web Development with Django", an excellent guide to my favorite web framework. Its strong points include an introduction to Python, and better coverage of Django 1.0 than nearly anybody else. Published by Addison-Wesley, it is available from Amazon and your favorite technical bookstore as well.

Colophon

Built using Django, served by Apache and mod_wsgi. The database is SQLite. The operating system is FreeBSD, on a VPS hosted at Johncompanies.com. Comment-spam protection by Akismet. Vintage topo imagery from the Maptech archive. The markup engine is Markdown.

Pile o'Tags

Stuff I Use

Akismet, del.icio.us, Django, dpaste.com, Emacs, FreeBSD, Freenode, jQuery, LaunchBar, MacPorts, Markdown, Mercurial, OS X, Postfix, Python, SQLite, Subversion, TextMate, Trac, Ubuntu Linux, wmii

Spam Report

At least 67581 pieces of comment spam killed since January 2008, mostly via Akismet.

The dawn of OS X malware

sign It's been almost five years since the release of OS X 10.0.0, and along the way there's been very little to worry about in the way of malware. That changed last week with the announcement of a trojan that propagates via iChat in a semi-automated way, then a Java worm that attempts to disseminate itself via Bluetooth.

Both of these are relatively innocuous, but there's not much standing in the way of copycat efforts with more dangerous payloads.

It's a good time to get familiar with ClamXav, the open source anti-virus package.

Saturday, February 18th, 2006
malware + os x + risks
2 comments

Some related posts: MacBook wireless security exploit fracas primer • RapidWeaver spamming vulnerability • Dangerous installers

• Comment from Matt Rose , 1 day later

OS X malware? It's a social engineering hack, if anything at all.

The first:
1. It doesn't disguise the fact that it's an application, other than
saying it's a tarball of pictures.
2. It asks for your password to install itself.
3. If you're not an admin user, it does nothing.

malware usually uses some kind of trickery to install itself, other than
REALLY dumb users.

The second hasn't actually been seen in the wild, and expires on thursday.

I realize that this is something of a huge deal for a platform that hasn't seen an attack yet, but if this is anywhere near the cream of the crop for black-hat exploits, I'm still not worried.

• Comment from Paul , 1 day later

That's the thing -- I don't think these get anywhere near what a more determined, careful, and/or mean perpetrator might accomplish. My advice about installing ClamXav is definitely about the (presumed) next wave, not this one.