Apple botnet discovered: 600K+ Macs infected

Hype or serious?


http://blogs.computerw​orld.com …red_600k_macs_i​nfected?ua


http://www.bbc.co.uk …ence-environment-17623422


http://news.drweb.com/​show/?i=2341

Doctor Web exposes 550 000 strong Mac botnet

April 4, 2012
Doctor Web—the Russian anti-virus vendor—conducted a research to determine the scale of spreading of Trojan BackDoor.Flashback that infects computers running Mac OS X. Now BackDoor.Flashback botnet encompasses more than 550 000 infected machines, most of which are located in the United States and Canada. This once again refutes claims by some experts that there are no cyber-threats to Mac OS X.
Systems get infected with BackDoor.Flashback.39 after a user is redirected to a bogus site from a compromised resource or via a traffic distribution system. JavaScript code is used to load a Java-applet containing an exploit. Doctor Web's virus analysts discovered a large number of web-sites containing the code. The recently discovered ones include:

• godofwar3.rr.nu
  
• ironmanvideo.rr.nu
  
• killaoftime.rr.nu
  
• gangstasparadise.rr.nu
  
• mystreamvideo.rr.nu
  
• bestustreamtv.rr.nu
  
• ustreambesttv.rr.nu
  
• ustreamtvonline.rr.nu
  
• ustream-tv.rr.nu
  
• ustream.rr.nu

IMAGE LINK: http://st.drweb.com …/2012/april/fla​shback.png

It is probably real. If not, it will be someday. This is the reality of becoming a popular operating system. It will take Apple years to harden their OS up to Windows 7 standards.

If they had bought a Mac, they would not have this problem..... oh wait a sec......

It's no big secret that iOS has flaws that get exploited in fact every OS does. The real question is how fast can they step up and release a patch. Apple has a history of threatening and taking away development rights for anyone who goes public about such things. If you think about it for years people claimed Linux was superior because no one was building malware for *nix systems. What they failed to acknowledge is that systems running various Linux flavors are being rooted every day of the week.

There was a story by Forbes not to long ago that exposed the real reason Apple was always a smaller target and why that is now starting to change. http://www.forbes.com …secret-software-exploits/

According to the Fsecure threat list this many other iOS threats are real. http://www.f-secure.com …obal/threats/de​scriptions

I have both Mac and Windows 7 (2 separate computers, not bootcamp). I found that the majority of infections that I got was from sharing thumbdrives with friends. They got the malwares from visiting "unsavory" websites, pirating etc..... So the user is the weakest link here.

How does this affect Mac? Many Mac users think they are invincible from malwares, therefore some surf the internet without considering good security behaviour, recklessly clicking links and visiting unknown websites (I am speaking from experience with friends and families).

Hopefully with this news many users will start being carefull on the internet, no matter what OS they are using because no OS is invincible. And that the weakest link is us the users, we have to be carefull.

well if people are interested in cleaning their macs, F-Secure has the procedures:

http://www.f-secure.com …der_osx_flashba​ck_i.shtml

isoMorphic wrote in post #14217130
It's no big secret that iOS has flaws that get exploited in fact every OS does. The real question is how fast can they step up and release a patch. Apple has a history of threatening and taking away development rights for anyone who goes public about such things. If you think about it for years people claimed Linux was superior because no one was building malware for *nix systems. What they failed to acknowledge is that systems running various Linux flavors are being rooted every day of the week.

There was a story by Forbes not to long ago that exposed the real reason Apple was always a smaller target and why that is now starting to change. http://www.forbes.com …secret-software-exploits/

According to the Fsecure threat list this many other iOS threats are real. http://www.f-secure.com …obal/threats/de​scriptions

Mac OS X and iOS are completely different...which one are you really talking about...?

imjason wrote in post #14219025
well if people are interested in cleaning their macs, F-Secure has the procedures:

http://www.f-secure.com …der_osx_flashba​ck_i.shtml

Thanks for posting that. I'm glad to report my IMac is clean of this horrible affliction. Time to check my 4 year old macbook.

Very real. Macs CAN and always have been able to have "viruses" and the such, just no one cared to write one before. This is the price of becoming popular. And yes, the f-secure process is legit and is whats being advised around the net. I was not infected thankfully

Does anybody know the key function to get this ~ ? I keep searching, but can't seem to find it.

The tilde (~) is accessed by using shift and the open single quote key (`), usually to the left of the number 1 key and above the tab key on most mac keyboards.

The ~ character in a path typically denotes a shorthand way of referring to your home directory. So, instead of typing:

/Users/Your_Home_Direc​tory/Desktop

you can type:

~/Desktop

kirk

PerfectTan wrote in post #14220214
Does anybody know the key function to get this ~ ? I keep searching, but can't seem to find it.

You mean, how computers are getting infected? Simple, it's porn and pirated movie sites. Porn/Pirate site says your flash player is out of date or that you need their "special" player, you install it and now you're infected. 100% user error. To avoid all Mac viruses, don't install software from sources that are shady... i.e. porn, pirate sites, P2P and so on. There are no Mac viruses btw. To qualify as a virus it must be able to self replicate - none can atm.

Macs are gaining poularity, expect to see lots more of this. The sad part is Apple always takes forever to patch/ make stuff compatible.

checked the three we have here, no problems.

Daship wrote in post #14221332
Macs are gaining poularity, expect to see lots more of this. The sad part is Apple always takes forever to patch/ make stuff compatible.

Unfortunately that is true. It takes Apple typically 90 days to patch their breaches. Microsoft has learned by many years of experience to make their patches quickly in just a few days.

As the attacks increase on the Apple OS, Apple will have to adjust the importance to making rapid patches. In doing so, they will have to admit their system are no imune to viruses. That will be a hard pickle to swallow.