David Young’s Analysis of F-Secure’s ‘iAdware’

David Young:

So anyway assuming that this program does use the dyld debugging facilities to inject some ad-opening code — so what? In order to get this or even an input manager onto my system you’ve still got to trojan me.

The point is: there are all sorts of ways any semi-competent programmer can write “adware” for Mac OS X. F-Secure’s ‘iAdware’ is, apparently, one. The real trick is getting the adware installed on people’s computers, either via trickery or some sort of exploit. iAdware is not such an exploit.

And Young is right that the way F-Secure has reported this — with few actual details of what it is — is more about sowing fear than anything else.

★ Sunday, 26 November 2006