The “critical” security issue mentioned here recently does turn out to be a real, significant, Mac-specific Internet security issue. As such, it’s one of the first. Although the specific issue itself is not really critical, its longer term ramifications may be. It’s all certainly worth understanding.

The most important thing to understand is that real, Mac-focused hackers are taking advantage of a flaw in Apple Remote Desktop to create malware (in particular trojan horses) that can do very bad things to your Mac system. Web sites have even sprung to help exploit the flaw. This type of activity clearly indicates that the Mac is on the radar of a set of real, experienced hackers. This is a bad, but not completely unexpected development.

The second thing to understand is that the flaw itself can’t be exploited remotely without getting you to download and install some unsafe software (the trojan horse) in the first place. And once you install any unsafe software, all bets are off. But, alas, there is now such unsafe software to really worry about.

As far as the details of how to protect against malware based on this vulnerability, and more on the overall ramifications of the appearance of this malware, there are at least two good and insightful articles out there: How to Protect Yourself From The New Mac OS X Trojans from TidBITS and New Trojan Leverages Unpatched Mac Flaw from the Washington Post.

Both articles address the details of the real, but not critical issue itself, as well as the more significant, and in the long run potentially critical ramifications of the ongoing reaction to that issue. It’s that reaction which is definitely something we’ll all want to monitor closely.