wige
04-20-2009, 01:28 PM
In what is being called a first for the Mac OS, a large scale infection has been identified which is believed to have compromised thousands of Mac based PCs.
The infection vector is not unique - the virus is a trojan horse downloaded and installed with pirated software obtained through various torrents. The most common source of infection is pirated versions of iWorks 09. What is unique, however, is that this is the largest scale attack to date against the Mac.
It is estimated that over 20,000 computers have downloaded the virus, and the botnet created by infected systems appears to have already been used to conduct distributed denial of service attacks against servers around the world. Although preventative measures could have minimized the impact of this malware, the pervasive attitude of "Mac superior security" in the Macintosh user community appears to have led to users to not take the basic precautions needed to avoid infection.
It is important to note that no, Mac computers are not more secure than Windows based computers. Until recently, Mac computers were rare enough that malware authors did not target the operating system. This has finally started to change. Over the past several months, new malware targetting Macs has been discovered with a frequency that appears to be trying to keep pace with the increasing popularity of the OS.
If you are a Mac user, let this be your wake up call. Make sure you have anti-virus installed on your system, and that it is up to date. Ensure you have a strong monitoring software firewall installed on your system to detect and prevent unauthorized network communications. And finally, ensure that you keep your Operating System patched.
The infection vector is not unique - the virus is a trojan horse downloaded and installed with pirated software obtained through various torrents. The most common source of infection is pirated versions of iWorks 09. What is unique, however, is that this is the largest scale attack to date against the Mac.
It is estimated that over 20,000 computers have downloaded the virus, and the botnet created by infected systems appears to have already been used to conduct distributed denial of service attacks against servers around the world. Although preventative measures could have minimized the impact of this malware, the pervasive attitude of "Mac superior security" in the Macintosh user community appears to have led to users to not take the basic precautions needed to avoid infection.
It is important to note that no, Mac computers are not more secure than Windows based computers. Until recently, Mac computers were rare enough that malware authors did not target the operating system. This has finally started to change. Over the past several months, new malware targetting Macs has been discovered with a frequency that appears to be trying to keep pace with the increasing popularity of the OS.
If you are a Mac user, let this be your wake up call. Make sure you have anti-virus installed on your system, and that it is up to date. Ensure you have a strong monitoring software firewall installed on your system to detect and prevent unauthorized network communications. And finally, ensure that you keep your Operating System patched.