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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

#31

Post by stcredzero »

ImprovedSilence wrote: post #19
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?

It just played the numbers game in terms of time until discovery, and gave Xcode users some respect?

I guess false negative was ok in this case. ;)

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

#32

Post by vectorpush »

superuser2 wrote: post #17
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 pract…

Viruses are not a fact of life for Mac users.

Neither are trojans, and that is exactly why this trojan has manifested so successfully. Windows users are mostly hardened to the basic threats of the internet (don't open a random exe etc), and are cognizant of the reality that malicious software does target them. Non-technical Mac users have been lulled into a false sense of security that will eventually make them a more vulnerable target than a Windows user (as Win7 and OSX pretty much stand shoulder to shoulder in terms of security).

OSX is still dramatically safer in terms of your actual risk of a random remote attack.

What is your evidence for this?

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

#33

Post by sliverstorm »

It's actually kind of fun when I occasionally get a virus. I always remove them by hand, piece by piece, and tracking them down is a learning experience. It's also amusing seeing some of the clever tricks they pull.

Maybe it's time to get a Mac?

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

#34

Post by ImprovedSilence »

stcredzero wrote: post #31
ImprovedSilence wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

It just played the numbers game in terms of time until discovery, and gave Xcode users some respect? I guess false negative was ok in this case. ;)

Haha, yeah, I wrote the sentence as it appeared in my head, realized it was incomplete and would make no sense to anyone, then just kinda slid the rest in....

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

#35

Post by felipeota »

dsrguru wrote: post #26
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…

I don't think small market share was ever really a reason that Mac OS X didn't get traditional viruses. UNIX-based servers have always had a huge market share, and since servers are presumably a more desirable target of infection and cracking than home computers are, we would have seen traditional viruses hit UNIX machines a long time ago if it were realistically doable. Also, before Mac OS X became as popular as it…

There are a lot more Windows desktops than UNIX servers. Just picture that every UNIX server is in average serving more than one Windows machine.

Also, it is way easier to attack a desktop than a server. Desktop users are more careless than server admins and have many more different applications malware can use to gain access: im apps, browsers, media players, pdf viewers, flash runtimes, etc. To attack a server you have to find an exploit using an http, ftp or ssh request to a limited and more secure, in general, set of programs.

Apple is growing very fast and it is finding itself in that position now. You can see that in the new security measures of the Mac App Store. By limiting what apps itself can do you limit what malware gaining access to those apps can do. Maybe Microsoft should have done something similar to prevent Windows from being the virus hub.

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

#38

Post by sukuriant »

alanh wrote: post #37

Of note — if Java is the attack vector, new Macs were not vulnerable by default as they don’t ship with Java installed anymore a/o 10.7 Lion. AFAIK, the biggest reason anyone would have Java is if you’re running Adobe products.

+ minecraft

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

#39

Post by nathannecro »

Herring wrote: post #22
ImprovedSilence wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cuz I haven't heard that for the past 15 years.... But as a recent convert to the Linux desktop, I kinda hope so.

My guess is it will be a 3 ghz quad-core android phone that docks on your monitor & wirelessly connects to everything else.

At the risk of perhaps angering the Linux community here (I work on a Linux box too), may I suggest that's where Windows 8/WP7 is going? And at further risk of anger, I will suggest that Android has reached its peak.

Evidence for point 1: Windows has such a large base of "desktop" applications with a larger base of active developers. Not only that, the majority of the world uses their standards for word processing, spreadsheets, presentations, etc. Honestly, OpenOffice and GoogleDocs are both still horrid. Horrid. Compared to Word 2010 on both Windows computers and OSX-based computers. Guess what? Most of the world, including us techies, still need to present, write documentation, yadda yadda. Perhaps when/if someone else develops an open/Ubuntu/RedHat/etc office suite that can actually match MS Office in ease of use and in reliability, then I'll change my mind.

Evidence for point 2: Android has grown quickly in the past three years because (in my opinion) of personalization, novelty, hardware, and free angry birds (maybe not). Android being "open" really...doesn't make a big deal to your average consumer (again, this is my opinion based on what I've seen). The big issue that's splitting through the three major draws for Android-based devices is massive fragmentation. On the device side, there are so many Android phones that ALL LOOK THE SAME (but are slightly different), that come out every other week, the novelty of owning "THE NEWEST ANDROID PHONE" dies out every other week. The fragmentation between devices is also massively confusing to the average consumer. Does the consumer want...the Galaxy S II...the Galaxy Nexus Prime...or the Nexus S? And by the way, what's the difference between all six (there are four flavors of the Galaxy S II) of these phones?? Software fragmentation is also leading to a fairly horrid user experience as developers have to develop for 2.3, 3.2, and 4.0.4. Never-mind that the UI actions for each of these OSes are very distinct and different, the UI LOOKS COMPLETELY DIFFERENT.

I don't know. I'm using a RAZR (first on 2.3 and now on 4.0.4) and I'm still not satisfied with Android. This is coming from one of the first adopters of the G1 (which I still have, and it still functions). I am eagerly waiting for the next generation (after the 900) of Windows phones.

(Wow, this didn't mean to turn into a rant...but hum.)

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

#40

Post by cooldeal »

dsrguru wrote: post #26
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…

I don't think small market share was ever really a reason that Mac OS X didn't get traditional viruses. UNIX-based servers have always had a huge market share, and since servers are presumably a more desirable target of infection and cracking than home computers are, we would have seen traditional viruses hit UNIX machines a long time ago if it were realistically doable. Also, before Mac OS X became as popular as it…

This virus spreads from visiting malicious websites or websites with malicious ads. Since not much browsing happens on servers, there is no reason to target them.

>lso, before Mac OS X became as popular as it is now, there were lots of Windows users who hated Apple fanboys and would have loved to write a wide-spread virus that targeted Mac OS X if possible

What? Does that mean that some Windows viruses were written by Mac fanboys to make Windows look bad?

> But it seems like Windows, especially pre-NT and pre-Vista and pre-7, but even now, has a unique vulnerability to traditional viruses

How? Can you explain what you mean by Windows having a unique vulnerability that is not present on a Mac?

> Obviously, Mac OS X can still get hit by trojans if people use intelligent social engineering,

Again, this is a drive by exploit from a web page, not social engineering. Why is this so hard to grasp?

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