Laptop Magazine Loves Internet Security Barrier

In a review of several Mac OS X security products, Laptop Magazine picked its favorite: Internet Security Barrier. As they say in the review, “Hands down, the most comprehensive security suite for Macs is Intego’s Internet Security Barrier X5.” The only negative point they found was “No Windows protection”, but that’s because they must have missed Intego’s Internet Security Barrier Dual Protection suite. So it’s not only the “most comprehensive security suite for Macs”, as the review says, but the DP version’s Windows protection gives the same protection for both platforms.

How Secure is your Mac OS X User Account?

When you work on your Mac, you think you are protected by your user account’s password. Well, savvy users know this is not the case; it’s easy to boot any Mac from a Mac OS X installation DVD and reset the password of any account. But not everyone worries about hackers carrying around Mac OS X discs with them.

That’s not the only way to reset a password, though. A hint was published on the Mac OS X Hints web site explaining how to do this without an installation disc, but simply from booting into “safe mode” and issuing a few commands. This means that any hacker can access all the files on your Mac, regardless of your password.

We at Intego have long been aware of this kind of problem. We know that Apple’s password protection is not very secure, and, while you can apply an Open Firmware password, there are other ways to protect your sensitive documents. Intego created FileGuard for just this reason. With FileGuard, you can create virtual safes that provide unbreakable protection for all your sensitive files. The passwords you use with FileGuard’s safes cannot be reset by a hack or trick; only you can open the safes you create. And with 256-bit encryption, even the NSA can’t get at your files.

If you have sensitive files on your Mac, don’t entrust them to Apple’s password protection; you really need serious security that will prevent anyone from accessing your files. Use Intego FileGuard for those files that merit such protection.

Using NetBarrier to Find AirPort Networks

In addition to protecting your Mac from hackers, vandals and all kinds of network attacks, NetBarrier X5 has a set of tools for monitoring your network and checking network status. One of these tools is especially useful if you use AirPort to connect your Macs to a network.

NetBarrier’s Network section shows you a great deal of information about your network interfaces (AirPort, Ethernet, Bluetooth, etc.), and also shows you a list of all available AirPort networks, together with their signal strength and what channel they use. This last bit of information - the channel - can be especially useful when setting up a network at your home or office. If you are surrounded with WiFi networks, you want yours to be on a channel that is relatively unencumbered. You can check which channels are used by neighboring networks, and find out which is the best channel to use for your network.

You can also find which networks are open, when on the road, to know which you can connect to. Since you can see the signal strength in NetBarrier, you can see right away which network is best to try connecting to first. (Naturally, signal strength is not the only criterion for good network access; a lot also depends on how many other people are using that network.)

NetBarrier X5 has other useful network monitoring tools; check them out if you want to keep tabs on what’s happening on your network.

Macworld UK Likes FileGuard X5

Macworld UK has just posted a review of Intego FileGuard X5, giving it four stars. They like the program, and mention that, “FileGuard X5 provides a quick, secure and safe way to lock up your data.” We couldn’t have said it better.

Find out more about FileGuard X5.

Nominate Intego Software for Macworld UK’s Readers’ Awards

Macworld UK is announcing the winners of its best product awards on June 12, and they are taking nominations from readers in addition to judging a list of hardware and software selected by their staff. You can go to this page and nominate your favorite Intego program: is it VirusBarrier, which protects you from all known Mac viruses, and Windows viruses too? Is it Personal Backup, which ensures that you always have copies of all your files, especially the irreplaceable ones? Or is it one of Intego’s Internet Security Barrier suites, which provide several Intego programs in a single package? Choose your favorite and tell Macworld why you like it!

New Variants of the RSPlug Trojan Horse

Intego first reported on the OSX.RSPlug Trojan Horse back in October of 2007. Since then, the people behind this malware have been busy making variants in order to better trap Mac users. Most of the variants aren’t really variants; they are simply disk images with different names from the original. (One antivirus vendor claimed to have found some three dozen such variants, but did not, it seems, examine the code to see that they were all the same.)

Other variants include two whose code are different, but especially variants that purport to install differently-named software. The original RSPlug Trojan horse installed “software” called MacCodec; other versions’ installers claim to install MacVideo or Porn4Mac. Also, the containers - the disk images containing the installers - differ. The first version was found in a series of disk images named with four digits followed by the disk image extension: for example, 1023.dmg. Others have included operacodec1234.dmg, nitroticket2018.dmg, uincodec4264.dmg, ixcodec1292.dmg and xerocodec1292.dmg. (Note that there may be variations in the numbers contained in these names, as well as the names themselves.)

In any case, this Trojan is alive and well, and recent posts in Mac forums show that users are still being infected. Intego VirusBarrier protects against all these variants, and will continue to protect against new ones as they are discovered.