Apple: We’re Nuking Mac Defender From Orbit. It’s The Only Way To Be Sure.

In a contentious move, Apple has been telling its official support reps not to remove the Mac Defender malware from users’ machines. Now that policy is starting to make more sense: Apple doesn’t want support reps removing the malware from Macs because they’re releasing a software update that kills Mac Defender automatically.

According to a new Apple Support knowledge base article:

In the coming days, Apple will deliver a Mac OS X software update that will automatically find and remove Mac Defender malware and its known variants. The update will also help protect users by providing an explicit warning if they download this malware.

It is expected that this security patch will be baked into Mac OS X 10.6.8, which should be coming down the pipeline pretty soon. In the meantime, to protect yourself from Mac Defender, follow our how-to guide.

An interesting move by Apple, but we’ve got to ask: by specifically nuking one malware program from orbit, is Cupertino setting the expectation that they will similarly address other malware variants in the future? Apple could be opening up quite the can of worms here. What do you think?

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