New Papers (2): two views of Mac security

While I was at the EICAR conference earlier this week, I also co-presented (along with Pierre-Marc Bureau and Andrew Lee) a paper on "Security, Perception and Worms in the Apple". During the presentation, I had occasion to recall how in the early 1990s I wrote a report on viruses for my boss at the time at Imperial Cancer Research Fund – I've spent most of the past twenty years working in bio-informatics, although with particular emphasis on systems, support, and security.

Of course, I included a section on Mac malware, and one of the Mac specialists in the IT team told me that he was impressed by the report in general, but there weren't any Mac viruses. How things have changed.

Before and after the presentation I spoke to several people (as one does at conferences) who were, slightly to my surprise, interested in the research I was doing in the 1990s into the Mac security field, so along with the new paper, I've made available again the paper on Macs and malware that I presented at Virus Bulletin in 1997 (to a handful of researchers, the hotel detective, and a passing dog, as I recall – I've carried dog biscuits to all my presentations since). (That was a joke, by the way.)

You can get more information and both papers here.

David Harley CISSP FBCS CITP
Research Fellow & Director of Malware Intelligence

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