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if apple needs to keep updating that file it seems silly to do it that way. why not do it as a cloud type thing much the way that Immunet is doing.

It would be much better if it could monitor and scan (if needed) all inbound files but it's better than nothing.

I would imagine that this would evolve into a real active scanner eventually. For now it's very rudimentary.

Would it have been so hard to include a real anti-virus/anti-malware solution instead of employing this laughably simple operation?

Does not the current Mac OS X Server come with Clam AV?

I'm certainly not making the claim that Macs are currently in great danger from viruses and the like, but within reason, more layers of security are a good thing.

...differently. When Microsoft started implementing their own anti-malware in Windows some people applauded them, others screamed like banshees that they were trying to take over the commercial space owned by those companies who derive profit from anti-malware solutions.

I sit somewhere in the middle, I'm (again scarily find myself agreeing with Thom) thinking that its good to see them making some effort, but I don't think it's quite far enough. Mounted devices - even if it was prompted - and maybe something that can use existing lists so it isn't up to Apple to keep it current, system files and processes that are "allowed" to directly interact with system components, and any applications supplied by Apple as part of the OS. But I don't think it should be their (Apple's) responsibility to protect everything - and there are other organisations who already do a good job of making products to do that anyway.

At the moment I use ClamXav and ClamXav Sentry and make sure all the apps I use download to a watched folder. That system seems to work well and wouldn't be hard for Apple to bundle with the OS. For the longer term though something more integrated that can be used in conjunction with whatever options the user wants to install would seem to be the solution. Microsoft's implementation works pretty well.

this is called picking the low fruit. if apple can stop a large portion of the mac os malware with a simple list and if-then statement, that is righteous.

Apple makes a very rudimentary, and possibly quite simple to thwart anti-malware/virus feature and everyone applauds.

Where have your heads gone people?

Don't you remember the hundred comment long threads about how this very same idea of including anti-malware was a forced performance-killer in windows; that microsoft should just learn how to code better from the begining.

Suddenly Jobs does the same thing and its a great idea?

I'm disappointed everyone in this thread. The whole point of paying more the hardware is to feel smug about running the "superior" software stack. If I wanted to have an anti-malware program running to protect myself from the low hanging fruit I could have saved a grand (and possibly have donated that money to Thom's strippers of world domination fund).

Let's think about this. Only files downloaded from the listed apps will be scanned at all. Funny, no torrent clients or p2p software is on that list. Now, one last question... where, exactly, do most people get pirated software and hense from where are the trojans most likely to come? The only word I can think of to describe this is: duh?

Since Apple is already verifying .dmg's using FSCK when mounting them, and the Archive Utility does some checksumming on .zips before extracting, it seems trivial to implement the Xprotect function in these toolchains too.

I can only imagine this is an easy update in 10.6.x if the need arises.

I was doing some stuff on Snow Leopard and it issus a message when mounting an image - it will be interesting to see how useful it is in the future and whether people start to ignore it after a while:

http://i990.photobucket.com/albums/af23/kawaiigardiner/SnowLeopardW...

I dunno, but didn't the majority of the infected cases come from pirated copies of iWork and CS downloaded from torrents? Unlike Windows where infections seem to perpetrate given any opportunity on Mac it was more of a conscious user choice.

This info. source (SCforum.info), look like very good Security Forum ?!

http://www.SCforum.info