Apple is getting good news and bad news about its new Mac App Store. The good news is that more than one million apps — free and paid — were downloaded on opening day. The bad news is hackers are invading.
Apple announced the Mac App Store’s opening on Thursday. It launched with more than 1,000 apps for Mac OS X Snow Leopard users. The store offers apps in categories such as education, games, graphics and design, lifestyle, productivity and utilities.
“We’re amazed at the incredible response the Mac App Store is getting,” said Apple CEO Steve Jobs. “Developers have done a great job bringing apps to the store, and users are loving how easy and fun the Mac App Store is.”
Unwelcome Hackulous
It’s not clear if Jobs is equally amazed at the hack attacks — and so quickly after the store launched. News reports tell the story of a group known as Hackulous that has developed a program to break the protection in the applications hosted on the new Apple store. Dubbed Kickback, Hackulous plans to release the code to the masses at some point.
“We’re not going to release Kickback until well after the store’s been established. We don’t want to devalue applications and frustrate developers,” Dissident, a spokesperson for Hackulous, told the BBC.
Other reports cite the ability to run paid apps downloaded from the Mac App Store for free in some cases by copying and pasting in a receipt number from a free app. Chester Wisniewski, a senior security adviser at Sophos, said application developers like Angry Birds, one of the most popular apps, appear to have ignored Apple’s advice on validating App Store receipts before launching.
Focus on Mac Security
“While this clearly should be a concern for Mac App Store developers who don’t want their software stolen, and…