Apple employees told to neither deny nor confirm presence of Mac Defender malware

Yesterday we reported about the Mac Defender malware that has been making attacking some Mac users, and now we have an interesting follow-up to the situation: it seems that Apple has chosen not to help users . According to a report from Ed Bott of ZDnet, who got his hands on a leaked internal document, Apple has informed its employees to “neither confirm nor deny the presence of any malware”, nor should they “attempt to fix the problem”.

Although it is ultimately the responsibility of the user to install legitimate app (Mac OS is an “open” eco-system without app approval), it is a pity that Apple seems to shy away from helping users who fell for the malware trap. It might be that the company doesn’t want to be liable for anything related to this, or maybe Apple is still looking at all the facts first. We’ll see.

This is a typical case of a Trojan Horse, where users are led to believe that they are installing a legitimate app, which turns out to be a malware. How do you feel about Apple asking its employees to “play dumb” about the whole situation? Read the letter that Apple sent to its employees over at ZDnet. What do you feel Apple should do?

George Wong
Categories: Apple
Tags: Apple Inc, email, Leaked, Malware, OS X