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Inside OS X Security: Page 7 of 11

One note; just because an application is a drag-and-drop installer doesn't mean it's more or less safe than one that uses an installer. It's pretty trivial to code installer routines into an application, and have the files it copies when you first run it live inside the application package itself. The great Reagan quote: "Trust, but verify" applies here.

If the Trojan has been in the wild a few days, then anti-malware can help, but it's not a panacea, and keep in mind that anti-malware consumes a non-zero amount of computer resources, as rather disturbingly stated in this post on thepcspy.

Having processes monitor your files and other processes as closely as antivirus software has to do to work correctly is not going to do nice things to your performance, but then again, neither will malware. So it's a question of your own comfort level and pain tolerance level.

3
Remote Attacks


At this point we get into things that are more targeted at application and operating system weaknesses, a la the QuickTime Java hole that was recently patched in QuickTime 7.1.6. These are things like Web sites that try to do bad things to your operating system or browser when you load them, "traditional" viruses that try to reach out and whack your computer, and scripted or human-driven attacks against your operating system or applications and the like.