April 6: The “Flashback” Trojan reportedly controls more than 550,000 Macs, an anti-virus firm has reported.
Apple has already issued a fix for the problem, but Russian web security firm Dr Web claimed that 600,000 Macs were now infected, with 274 even identifying themselves as coming from Cupertino, California, where Apple is based.
A Trojan is a malicious programme designed to give full control of infected computer to another computer.
The infection is unusual because Apple’s computers are usually much less likely to get attacked than their PC counterparts. A study by Dr Web claimed that “This once again refutes claims by some experts that there are no cyber-threats to Mac OS X”. Trojans can allow third parties to take over an individual’s computer.
The latest variant of Flashback uses a known and previously unpatched vulnerability cause by an update to Java. Apple’s fix, issued earlier this week, should remove it and is installed automatically.
The Trojan poses as an installer for Adobe’s Flash player. If a user’s Apple Safari browser is set to automatically open “safe” files, such as those ending in pkg, unknowing users could find their existing security software deactivated and their machine used to report back to a central server that it has been infected.
Although the threat is currently classified as “low”, Mac users have been warned not to open unfamiliar files or attachments and to turn off Safari’s setting for opening safe files automatically.
According to Dr Web, 57 per cent of the infected Macs are in America and 20 per cent are in Canada.
Article source: http://in.news.yahoo.com/half-million-macs-infected-trojan-000000524.html
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