Snow Leopard’s Secret Anti-Malware Feature
Posted on August 27, 2009 |
Snow Leopard, the new version of Apple's Mac operating system, is sufficiently short on new user features that Apple wouldn't have hidden one of the more significant additions. But that's exactly what they've done, presumably because it conflicts with the company's marketing message.
Snow Leopard contains a component that checks for the "signatures" of known malware alerts users when a Web download, e-mail attachment, iChat instant message contains code that the system thinks is malicious. This File Quarantine feature is not mentioned in the Snow Leopard Reviewers' Guide nor could I find any reference to it in the discussion of Snow Leopard on the Apple Web site. It was discovered by testers putting the released version of Snow Leopard through is paces and officially acknowledged by Apple on Aug. 26 as an extension of technology first introduced in Tiger (OS X 10.4).
