AntiVirus

Searching for ‘antivirus’ now only shows games or Find My iPhone-esque apps.

Apple has seemingly decided to crack down on antivirus and antimalware apps, removing them from the App Store. Although there has been no official statement from Apple on a policy change, Apple’s loose guidelines allow them to pull pretty much anything at any time, particularly something like antivirus which has questionable utility within the sandboxed iOS environment of iPhones and iPads.

One casualty of the removal is Intego’s VirusBarrier, which claims that this takedown was not specific to its product with Apple deciding the entire category of antivirus products is now off-limits.

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Apple has announced in a new support document that an update to Mac OS X will be issued in “the coming days” to find and squash malware. This malware comes through supposed anti-virus software that is actually built to steal private information like credit card numbers.

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.

In the meantime, Apple is now offering a manual resolution for users who wish to remove and find malware as soon as possible. The solution is pasted after the break. This upcoming software update may be a simple security patch or may even be a part of Mac OS X 10.6.8, which Apple has already seeded twice to developers.

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