Apple working on fix for 600,000 infected Macs

"Now that it's being increasingly targeted by botnet herders, Apple has a thing or two to learn about cooperating with friendly security researchers. Boris Sharov, the CEO of Dr. Web, the Russian security company that first reported more than half a million Macs were infected with Flashback malware last week, says when his company alerted Apple to the botnet, it never responded to him.

Worse yet, on Monday Apple asked a Russian registrar to take down a domain it said was being used to host a command and control server for Flashback, but in fact was a 'sinkhole' that Dr. Web had set up to observe and analyze the botnet. Sharov describes the lack of communication and cooperation as a symptom of a company that has never before had to work closely with the security industry. 'For Microsoft, we have all the security response team's addresses,' he says. 'We don't know the antivirus group inside Apple.'"
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Little steps, Apple... little steps...
 
nelwa said:
,but, but, ...but I thought Apples don't get virusses? :wtf:
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The do not get PC viruses... or so they tell us.

mmmmac.jpg


http://www.apple.com/why-mac/better-os/#viruses
 
EtienneK said:
But a Mac is a PC? PC = personal computer, which a Mac is?
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It is THEM vs US !

Turtlenecks vs T-shirts ... it seams.

:whistle:

Why the Mac Is Not a PC

The Macintosh started out on the Motorola 680x0 family of processors, migrated to PowerPC architecture in 1994, and switched to x86 architecture in 2006. And during the Mac's 24 year history, the hardware has always been designed to run the Mac OS and no other.

...that doesn't make them PCs in the way the rest of the world uses the term....

Macs have been able to run Windows using x86 cards and software emulation, and more recent Macs can run Windows alongside the Mac OS with virtualization - and even boot directly into Windows using Apple's Boot Camp software. But that doesn't make them PCs in the way the rest of the world uses the term - and the way Apple uses it in its ads.

The Mac Is a Personal Computer

If anything, it would be nice if the Mac were seen as a personal computer - in contrast to an impersonal one.

Despite its name, the IBM PC was designed for the office, not the home. It was "personal" in that it had its own CPU and wasn't a terminal dependent on a minicomputer for processing power. It was designed for word processing, spreadsheets, and databases, and the standard business configuration included a green screen display and a text-only video card. You had to learn DOS to use the programs, and productivity software came with huge manuals. And if you wanted low resolution color graphics, you had to use a different video card and display.

Contrast that with the Macintosh, which came to market several years after the IBM PC and MS-DOS. It wasn't designed for a text-only world - when it handled text, it did so with finesse. On the Mac, you could actually see different fonts on the screen in different sizes and with different attributes (bold, italic, etc.). And you didn't need to learn cryptic key commands that varied from program to program, as in the world of WordPerfect, Lotus 1-2-3, and dBase II for DOS. You could use the mouse, easily select text, and pull down menus to see what your software could do. You are free to explore and experiment.
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;)

Linky

http://www.adweek.com/adfreak/apples-get-mac-complete-campaign-130552
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Get_a_Mac <-- Here is the Apple "Get a Mac" ad campaign.

EDIT: Grrr... the ad campaign link does not want to show here.
 
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If 90% of PC's in the world used OSX, rather than Windows, then OSX would be prime target for hackers and would have just as many (if not more) viruses than windows. I suspect the viruses would be even more malicious because OSX is based on unix which is much more 'open' to modification than windows. Coding malware/rootkits which tamper with low-level Windows kernel functions must be way harder than coding something similar for UNIX-based OS's. If you think Mac is gonna save you from viruses, think again. There's no reason to think its safer apart from the fact that hackers aren't interested in targeting an OS that only has a fraction of the population using it...
 
fragtion said:
If 90% of PC's in the world used OSX, rather than Windows, then OSX would be prime target for hackers and would have just as many (if not more) viruses than windows. I suspect the viruses would be even more malicious because OSX is based on unix which is much more 'open' to modification than windows. Coding malware/rootkits which tamper with low-level Windows kernel functions must be way harder than coding something similar for UNIX-based OS's. If you think Mac is gonna save you from viruses, think again. There's no reason to think its safer apart from the fact that hackers aren't interested in targeting an OS that only has a fraction of the population using it...
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Sorry but your statement about unix / linux reflects your knowledge of the platform. Btw many exploited holes in OSX are 3rd party, for example: Flash, Java, ...

Apple FYI publicly stated more than a year ago that it would no longer be maintaining Java; hence this role should already have been assumed by Oracle, as it today is for the other platforms.

I do however agree that Apple should make it simple enough for the non techy user to prevent these types of issues,

In summary; a mountain out of a molehill... The Apple "News thing" works both ways, ... surprised they haven't addressed this incident well in the media.
 
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fragtion said:
If 90% of PC's in the world used OSX, rather than Windows, then OSX would be prime target for hackers and would have just as many (if not more) viruses than windows. I suspect the viruses would be even more malicious because OSX is based on unix which is much more 'open' to modification than windows. Coding malware/rootkits which tamper with low-level Windows kernel functions must be way harder than coding something similar for UNIX-based OS's. If you think Mac is gonna save you from viruses, think again. There's no reason to think its safer apart from the fact that hackers aren't interested in targeting an OS that only has a fraction of the population using it...
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Isn’t it the case that a high proportion of business servers are unix-based?
 
milomak said:
Isn’t it the case that a high proportion of business servers are unix-based?
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Thank you, missed that one.

Yes the majority most certainly are Unix based, for example: you can't tell me Google, Amazon, Apple, ... run their empires on Microsoft servers?
 
kilobits said:
The do not get PC viruses... or so they tell us.

mmmmac.jpg


http://www.apple.com/why-mac/better-os/#viruses
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That seems an odd statement to make, it's like saying windows programs won't run on our system because well they are WINDOWS PROGRAMS :D.

Now we wait for virus to start infecting apples. Apples are big now so i am sure people are working on virus and Trojans now because it's worth it.
 
[)roi(];8075550 said:
Thank you, missed that one.

Yes the majority most certainly are Unix based, for example: you can't tell me Google, Amazon, Apple, ... run their empires on Microsoft servers?
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it surely stands to reason then that if unix is easier to target, it would be in the interests of those who create virii/hackers to target business where the reward is surely far greater? and easier to get to.
 
milomak said:
it surely stands to reason then that if unix is easier to target, it would be in the interests of those who create virii/hackers to target business where the reward is surely far greater? and easier to get to.
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With linux the source code is out in the open and available for peer review so flaws in the code can be caught before it makes it out into the wild or patched very quickly. Closed source stuff rely obscurity for security. Security patches for open source stuff usually gets released in hours when found, not the same for closed source stuff.
 
Yet another OSX/Java Trojan spotted in the wild

Hard on the heels of the Flashback Trojan, Kaspersky Labs is warning of a new OSX threat, which it’s dubbed Backdoor.OSX.SabPub.a.

In a post to Securelist, Kaspersky’s Costin Raiu says the Trojan connects to a command and control server hosted on a Californian-based VPS associated with the Onedumb.com free DNS.

Apparently a month old, the Trojan uses a Java exploit given the name Exploit.Java.CVE-2012-0507.bf in the Kaspersky post, with the ZelixKlassMaster obfuscator to try and get past malware detection products.

Although Raiu says the infection vector is “not clear”, he said there are reports suggesting the Trojan is spread via e-mails directing users to URLs hosting the malware (located in the USA and Germany).

In a second post, however, Raiu fingers infected Office documents as the vector. He also states that the Trojan is in “active stage”, after the C&C server took control of a “goat” machine operated by Kaspersky and started looking for documents.

Similarities to the LuckyCat attacks, which also used infected documents, lead Raiu to suggest that like the earlier malware, SabPub may be targeting Tibetan activists. One of the document names Kasperky Labs has turned up in its analysis of SabPub, “10th March Statemnet” (sic), invokes the date of announcement by the Deli Lama.
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Source The register Also covered Securelist

Guess that brings proof to the "If you build them They will come" argument re: virii and Mac's popularity.
 
Elimentals said:
Source The register Also covered Securelist

Guess that brings proof to the "If you build them They will come" argument re: virii and Mac's popularity.
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Viruses . . . and it was bound to happen. I think the mobile devices will become an even more alluring target though.
 
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