So we're just getting back into the swing of things, and we're pretty amazed by the sort of Rip Van Winkle effect one can invoke by being near-comatose and off the grid for a few days. (Bill Gates to step down? Get out of here, it'll never happen. Oh, it happened last Thursday? Never mind.) It's like the Y2K bug hit the collective AtAT consciousness and we're shocked not to see people with handlebar moustaches or something. We've got this odd sense of discontinuity in the flow of time, and it'll take time for us to fill in the gaps and start to feel less anachronistic again.

So a hearty thanks to faithful viewer Grant Gallagher, who's doing his part to drag us back into the present by filling us in on this whole iTools security brouhaha. Well, to be fair, we don't know whether it qualified as an actual brouhaha or not, because we weren't around to witness the Mac community's reaction when the news first broke, but we'll label it a "virtual brouhaha" for the time being and leave it at that. If you haven't heard about all this either, there's a smattering of info on MacInTouch's "Recent News" page. Basically, now that Apple's iTools suite has been out for a couple of weeks and people have had more time to dissect it, a few potentially troubling bits of info have shaken out of the mix. For one thing, iTools works its magic via an undocumented browser plug-in-- and info sent from Apple's servers to that plug-in (including your iTools password) is sent in cleartext: no encryption whatsoever. Said data intercepted en route by black-clad wrongdoers would give them access to your mac.com email, your iDisk contents, etc.

Perhaps more worrisome, though, is the fact that the iTools plug-in works by sending Apple Events to the Mac OS when instructed to by a web page. Apple Events, those system-level calls which make Applescript so powerful, are capable of doing all kinds of neat things: emptying the Trash, deleting whole folders of data, changing the names of any files labeled "Important" to the names of randomly chosen Disney characters, etc. While we haven't dug too deeply into this yet, it sounds to us like someone might be able to create a web page that executes arbitrary and potentially destructive commands on the remote systems of any browsers that have the misfortune to load it. That's ringing a bell, and the bell sounds like this: "ActiveX... ActiveX..."

Now, we're fully aware that we're paranoid types, so it's possible that none of this really amounts to anything. But if it does, don't assume that running your backup browser disables the iTools plug-in-- the iTools installer sticks a copy in place for every browser on your system without telling you. In fact, the latest version of the installer reportedly installs the plug-in on every browser on every mounted disk it can find-- and even modifies Netscape and IE installers, virus-like, so that they will install iTools along with their browsers each time they're run. Very, very suspicious behavior, if you ask us-- perfect for a crucial stealth component of a massive covert campaign for world domination. And Apple's not making us any less suspicious by deleting messages about this stuff that get posted to the iTools Apple Discussion Forum. The last time they did that was when people were posting about the alleged "Blue Blocker" scandal-- and most people took the "censorship" as an admission of guilt. How long before this is the subject of a new Oliver Stone blockbuster? Suppose Noah Wyle will be tapped to reprise his role as Uncle Steve?