Worrysome feature

pedz

pedz

Registered
I just downloaded Opera 11. When you open the dmg, it pops up a box to agree to the license. This is the first time I've seen this feature. Curiously, the mac did not warn me that I had just downloaded the dmg. It did warn me when I tried to run Opera that I had just downloaded it but didn't something have to run for it to pop up the "Agree to License" box? Seems like a place a Trojan could be hidden.

I'm on 10.6.5.
 
The license pop-up is a feature of Mac OS X's Installer program as well as the program used to mount disk images. Nothing to be worried about. The only thing a person can put in that license agreement is text, and, I believe, images. No code can run -- malicious or benign.

Most software distributed on DMG files don't make use of this "license agreement before mounting disk image" functionality, which explains why you've never seen it before.

You probably have Safari's preferences set to "Open safe files after downloading" which automatically mounts DMG files when they're done downloading. You downloaded the DMG, and, when it finished, Safari automatically mounted the DMG at which point the license agreement was displayed.

The license agreement is displayed upon the mounting of the disk image, not on the application launching.
 
I see... good.

Windows made a pretty big mistake with its disk mounting "auto launch" thingy. I was worried Apple had made the same mistake.
 
Fortunately not case (for the microsoftastic design fail).
I usually disable the automatic mounting of safe files in the browser (it messes with some things that I'd otherwise install with Terminal, but it also helps in making sure I decide what I install and when).
 
pedz said:
I see... good.

Windows made a pretty big mistake with its disk mounting "auto launch" thingy. I was worried Apple had made the same mistake.
Click to expand...

It's a similar mistake. I recommend disabling that feature in Safari. It's been used for exploits more than once in the past. There haven't been any exploits reported since 10.3 IIRC, but still. It seems to me like an accident waiting to happen.
 
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