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Flashback trojan reportedly controls half a million Macs and counting

arstechnica.com

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Re: Flashback trojan reportedly controls half a million Macs and counting

#11

Post by philaquilina »

phillco wrote: post #9
philaquilina wrote: post #4

As 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…

Whoa, no kidding. The majority of people are not going to stop on those two letters and consciously differentiate "virus" from "PC virus."

Re: Flashback trojan reportedly controls half a million Macs and counting

#13

Post by cooldeal »

Xuzz wrote: post #5
philaquilina wrote: post #4

As 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…

Doesn't it use a Java exploit?

From the article:

>..the most recent variant from earlier this week targeted an unpatched Java vulnerability within Mac OS X. That is, it was unpatched (at the time) by Apple—Oracle had released a fix for the vulnerability in February of this year, but Apple didn't send out a fix until earlier this week, after news began to spread about the latest Flashback variant.

>..the malware installs itself after you visit a compromised or malicious webpage, so if you're on the Internet, you're potentially at risk.

Where is the social engineering part?

Re: Flashback trojan reportedly controls half a million Macs and counting

#14

Post by rudyfink »

craigmccaskill wrote: post #10
phillco wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Maybe this ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GQb_Q8WRL_g ) (MAC v. PC advertisement on viruses) is what you were thinking of?

Re: Flashback trojan reportedly controls half a million Macs and counting

#16

Post by FireBeyond »

Xuzz wrote: post #5
philaquilina wrote: post #4

As 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…

And almost no Windows "malware" in the last decade has been a traditional "virus" either. Trojans, social engineering, all so much easier.

Re: Flashback trojan reportedly controls half a million Macs and counting

#17

Post by superuser2 »

philaquilina wrote: post #4

As 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…

Yes, it is correct that Macs can get viruses. Where people get upset is when you generalize this to say that because >1 virus exists, OSX presents no significant advantage over Windows.

Viruses are not a fact of life for Mac users. Talk to anyone who uses or services Macs; you'll be hard-pressed to find anyone who's even seen an OSX virus. Whereas for Windows power-users, cleaning viruses for friends/parents is practically a rite of passage.

OSX is still dramatically safer in terms of your actual risk of a random remote attack. Whether this is economics or superior engineering, or how Windows and OSX stand up to deliberate attackers, I will not pretend to know.

Re: Flashback trojan reportedly controls half a million Macs and counting

#18

Post by beedogs »

aboodman wrote: post #15
jklp wrote: post #6

This 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 ...

To Linux! Quickly now!

In 10 years, I bet most of us will be running Linux on the desktop, actually.

Re: Flashback trojan reportedly controls half a million Macs and counting

#19

Post by ImprovedSilence »

dinedal wrote: post #2

Whoa, 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?

That would be my guess. Perhaps it wanted to stay un-detected, and un-reverse engineered as long as possible? It just played the numbers game in terms of time until discovery, and gave Xcode users some respect? Hence deleting itself in the presence of anti-virus software as well?

Re: Flashback trojan reportedly controls half a million Macs and counting

#20

Post by ImprovedSilence »

beedogs wrote: post #18
aboodman wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To Linux! Quickly now!

In 10 years, I bet most of us will be running Linux on the desktop, actually.

Cuz I haven't heard that for the past 15 years....

But as a recent convert to the Linux desktop, I kinda hope so.

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