Mac Attack (OSX.RSPlug.A Trojan Horse)

Well folks, it was too good to be true. One of the very first serious attacks has happened to Mac OS X (everything from 10.2 to 10.5). There is a Trojan Horse out there for the Mac OS called OSX.RSPlug.A. In reality it's not a Virus because it doesn't replicate itself and it only supposedly changes your DNS.

What does all that mean in English you ask? Well, when you connect to the internet your ISP (Internet Service Provider) has what is known as Domain Name Servers (DNS) which tell your computer where to navigate itself in the internet. Without DNS your computer wouldn't know how to get to this Blogger site.

The Trojan Horse puts in a malicious DNS setting that you cannot change. Additionally it hijacks your System Preferences and doesn't allow you to do anything. The only issue with this is that every time you do a search it takes you to a malicious search site, and or a porn site.

If you're a girl on a Mac you're probably already safe because the only way you can get this Trojan Horse is by being a dummy. Yes, a dummy. My friend who got this Trojan Horse (who will remain nameless) went to a site and wanted to see some video they had. The site asked him to install some sort of software in order to view the video. After he downloaded the software, he entered his admin password and BOOM he was infected.

I say girls are safe because you gals aren't going around looking for porn, unless you're one of the many girls that I know... but that's a totally different post altogether.

There are supposedly some ways to fix this. One is to have an anti-virus program running on your mac, or by using the Terminal Command program. In my friends case, not even Norton Antivirus for Mac helped. In the end I had to reinstall the entire operating system to get his Mac to work correctly.

You can find some articles on the Trojan Horse at MacWorld and Intego. They have the "how to remove" notes.

In the end, this is more of an annoyance than a real issue. You don't need to think twice about your Mac not being safe. Just don't download and install stuff you don't know about.

Phone Address Book Contacts Export

Have you ever had a cell phone with too many contacts to copy manually by hand? Switching cell phones can be a bitch only because transferring the contacts from one phone to the other means finding a way to export all your contacts off your phone.

On the Windows world there are utilities like Content Manager which let's you export all your contacts to Outlook Express or Outlook, but there are several things that need to be done before that step. For the complete instructions go to this forum and see if this suits you.

The downside to using a Windows machine is that you will need to have your service carrier tap into your old phone and then give you a *.pbb file which then can be used with Content Manager.

On the Mac side things get much easier. All you need to do is connect your old phone (assuming it has a USB port to connect to a computer) and then open up the application called "iSync". iSync will synchronize all your contacts to the application called "Address Book" on your Mac.

Apple's Address Book has one HUGE fault with it. You cannot export to CSV. I know... I don't understand why Apple wouldn't include that as a feature on that program. At this point you need to go here and download a free application called Address Book Exporter 2.1.2.

This wonderful application lets you export all your contacts to a CSV file. Once you've exported all the contacts, you can either import them to your Gmail account or Outlook/Outlook Express application.

By the way, Apple's Mac OS X Leopard (10.5) still hasn't added the export to CSV feature in the Address Book application.