Flashback trojan reportedly controls half a million Macs and counting
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Re: Flashback trojan reportedly controls half a million Macs and counting
#2Whoa, it aborts infection if you have XCode installed?
Is this just to prevent itself from infecting someone's computer that might be able to study it?
Re: Flashback trojan reportedly controls half a million Macs and counting
#3At least it is easy to check if you're infected. According to this tutorial, it's also not difficult to remove the trojan: http://www.f-secure.com/v-descs/trojan-downloader_osx_flashb...
Re: Flashback trojan reportedly controls half a million Macs and counting
#4As someone who used to sell Mac computers, I used to get asked the question "Is it true macs never get viruses?", to which I replied "No that's not true." (It was just an apple reseller store afterall so I was never compelled to bend the facts.) I'd try to explain the caveats a bit: a smaller market share and the unix based operating system requiring more permissions, yada yada, being "prohibitive" to an attack but still vulnerable. Still, for 3 years that question came up a few times a week, even as apple started taking off (2006-2009 ish) and grabbing more and more of the market.
I guess it was just amazing to me how disinformation like that flows so freely. It probably started out with the caveats but eventually got boiled down to "Macs never get viruses". And what computer company is going to publicly correct that statement?
Re: Flashback trojan reportedly controls half a million Macs and counting
#5As someone who used to sell Mac computers, I used to get asked the question "Is it true macs never get viruses?", to which I replied "No that's not true." (It was just an apple reseller store afterall so I was never compelled to bend the facts.) I'd try to explain the caveats a bit: a smaller market share and the unix based operating system requiring more permissions, yada yada, being "prohibitive" to an attack but s…
The interesting part is that I still haven't seen one traditional "virus" — even is thing appears to still be just social engineering users to install it, by pretending to be Flash Player. I can't imagine it's that much more difficult to actually find an OS X vulnerability to propagate with, but I still haven't seen any.
Edit: It appears this uses a Java vulnerability, rather than the fake-Flash Player-installer that it was originally reported using (possibly an older variation of the same malware). So that's no longer accurate!
Re: Flashback trojan reportedly controls half a million Macs and counting
#6This both saddens and delights me, as it proves that Macs are now at a large enough market share that malware writers are willing to target that platform ...
Re: Flashback trojan reportedly controls half a million Macs and counting
#7As someone who used to sell Mac computers, I used to get asked the question "Is it true macs never get viruses?", to which I replied "No that's not true." (It was just an apple reseller store afterall so I was never compelled to bend the facts.) I'd try to explain the caveats a bit: a smaller market share and the unix based operating system requiring more permissions, yada yada, being "prohibitive" to an attack but s…
Well this had to happen at some point. Though it has a small marketshare and is based on unix, given the kind of demographic that uses a mac, (richer, more connected, etc) it is very lucrative for trojans to infect a mac and steal personal information, identity. It's unfortunate that people have this misunderstanding that macs don't get viruses and are actually not careful when using a mac.
Re: Flashback trojan reportedly controls half a million Macs and counting
#8[deleted]
Re: Flashback trojan reportedly controls half a million Macs and counting
#9As someone who used to sell Mac computers, I used to get asked the question "Is it true macs never get viruses?", to which I replied "No that's not true." (It was just an apple reseller store afterall so I was never compelled to bend the facts.) I'd try to explain the caveats a bit: a smaller market share and the unix based operating system requiring more permissions, yada yada, being "prohibitive" to an attack but s…
Didn't Apple used to claim that Macs didn't get viruses? I can't remember. (This would be at least several years ago, when Mac malware was still fully theoretical.) It's possible they never stated it directly, and the phrase was spread by fans.
To be fair, their slogan is currently "Macs don't get PC viruses" [1]. Which is true. Although, devilishly close enough to blur the two in somebody's mind.
Re: Flashback trojan reportedly controls half a million Macs and counting
#10As someone who used to sell Mac computers, I used to get asked the question "Is it true macs never get viruses?", to which I replied "No that's not true." (It was just an apple reseller store afterall so I was never compelled to bend the facts.) I'd try to explain the caveats a bit: a smaller market share and the unix based operating system requiring more permissions, yada yada, being "prohibitive" to an attack but s…
Didn't Apple used to claim that Macs didn't get viruses? I can't remember. (This would be at least several years ago, when Mac malware was still fully theoretical.) It's possible they never stated it directly, and the phrase was spread by fans. To be fair, their slogan is currently "Macs don't get PC viruses" [1]. Which is true. Although, devilishly close enough to blur the two in somebody's mind. [1] http://www.appl…
I was going to post the exact same thing, but spent the last five minutes searching site:apple.com virus for a direct quote. Seems they've changed their lingo as I definitely remember (around the time of the whole mac vs pc campaign) a definite statement about not getting viruses at all.