Looks like Mac has added anti-malware to their newest operating system, Snow Leopard. I’ve heard great things about this OS so hopefully it won’t disappoint. Most of our visitors don’t use Mac though so I doubt this will be interesting to a lot of you.

The protection was quietly added earlier this month to Snow Leopard 10A432, the most recent build of the new version of Mac OS X that is due for release this Friday, according to someone who has tested the feature and asked not to be identified because pre-release versions of Snow Leopard come with non-disclosure clauses. A separate Snow Leopard tester said the functionality is included in 10A421a, an even earlier build.

The feature causes users who try to install applications known to be malicious to receive a pop-up window warning that the file will damage the computer and should be moved to the Trash.

At the moment, though, the feature offers fairly limited protection. Based on an analysis of a corresponding preferences file called XProtect.plist, it appears that the feature checks for only two known Mac trojans. And it only flags those files if they were downloaded from the internet using Entourage, iChat, Safari, and a handful of other applications, according to this person. Files that were downloaded using Skype and dozens of other net-facing applications aren’t covered, nor are files on DVDs and thumb drives.

Nothing impressive really, but hopefully things will be changed around sooner rather than later. This isn’t a full release after all and there is time for improvement.

Credit: Dan Goodin