Existing users, 
<b>Unlike virtually every other application on Macs, Google Earth's updater is loaded and ready to run all the time and it updates this application automatically and without telling you. That is a serious security hole and could cause other problems that you'll be unable to diagnosis.</b> Even Apple doesn't do that with OS X. Google has apparently been getting away with this with their Windows applications and thought they could get away with it on Macs. We need to teach them otherwise.
If you've installed a recent version of Google Earth, you might want to remove it. Here are Google's official instructions:
http://earth.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=33692
Those instructions are very incomplete, however, because they leave around the very updater application we want to get rid of. MacOSXHints describes how to permanently remove the updater here:
http://www.macosxhints.com/article.php?story=20090424045847496
Keep in mind that, as that MacOSXHints page notes, "other Google software may also use/install the Google Update service." Until Google changes this policy, you might want to avoid all Google applications that install on your Mac and might, now or in the future, install this rogue auto-updater.
Google Earth
View satellite imagery, maps, terrain, 3D buildings, geographical content.
Version: 5.1.3533.1731
Google's Rogue Auto-updater - Z4N3VT
Locate your copy of Google Earth, Control-click on the application and choose Show Package Contents from the pop-up menu. Now remove the following two files, based on starting at the top of the application bundle:Contents/Frameworks/KeystoneRegistration.framework/Resources/install.py
Contents/Frameworks/KeystoneRegistration.framework/Resources/Keystone.tbz
The first file is the python script used to install the updater service, while the second is a tar-bzip'd bundle that contains the updater service. If the source files aren't there, Google Earth will be incapable of installing the updater service, no matter what you tell/told it on first run.
Remove the updater application and files installed by Google Earth
If you've already been running Google Earth 5, you may also wish to do the following after completing the first part of the hint. Remove the following folders/files:
~/Library/Google/GoogleSoftwareUpdate
~/Library/LaunchAgents/com.google.keystone.daemon.plist
~/Library/Caches/com.Google.Keystone.*
~/Library/Logs/GoogleSoftwareUpdateAgent.log
The first being the Google update service, the second the launchd plist that specifies when to run the service, third any items already downloaded by the google update service, and fourth the log file from the update service.
Reply to This
Saturday, May 09 2009 @ 09:49 AM PDT