Apple’s products have, so far been secure from worms, viruses and hackers, until now. A trojan going by the name of Flashback has been infecting Macs off late and experts are calling it the worst security disaster to have hit Macs. Almost 5,50,000 Macs have been estimated to have been infected, so far. The Flashback trojan is said to have been spreading around the world over the past two months. Its target is Macs and Macbooks running the OS X platform. Dr. Web, a popular Russian security solution vendor has the break-up and details of the trojan's reach. The U.S has the majority of all infected Macs with some 56.6 percent of infections followed by Canada and the United Kingdom.
Under fire
The heart of the exploit lies in Java and the systems are infected after they visit a link that fires up some Javascript code. There are a whole bunch of sites that have such infected pages, Dr. Web has learnt. There are also some reports of users finding the malicious code on dlink.com. The exploit allows an executable file to be downloaded to the infected PC, after which instructions and additional data are downloaded by it from a remote server. The trojan isn’t known to infect files or data on the Mac, but it’s said that those controlling the trojan can do whatever they wish to do. The vulnerability used to exploit the Macs have been around for months now, but Apple has only now released security fixes for it on the 3rd of April, 2012.
Dr. Web also talks about the claim that the OS X platform is flawless, when it comes to security. This incident shows a pretty large loophole that allowed the trojan to propagate. There’s also a chance that other loopholes might exist in the operating system that haven’t been discovered, yet. Many would say that it’s the popularity of the Mac OS X and Apple’s products lately that are the reason hackers and virus writers are now focussing on the OS. Those looking for a fix to the exploit can download it from Apple’s site, here.
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