Over 600,000 Macs Infected by Flashback Trojan

It is a myth that Macintosh computers are immune to malware, virus, and other malicious attacks. In fact, the recent Flashback Trojan malware attack on Mac computers exposed the OS vulnerability and has made many Mac users invest in anti-virus programs designed for Macintosh.

For the uninitiated, the Flashback Trojan malware aka the BackDoor.Flashback.39 was first spotted in September 2011, and it masqueraded to be an Adobe (News - Alert) Flash Player plug-in installer. Now, an estimated 600,000 Mac users have been infected with this malware and according to a report, 60 percent of the Macs infected are in the United States. The malware is supposed to be the largest attack ever on the Mac operating system, which is why Apple (News - Alert) recently released a fix, which can be accessed by updating the software.

Technically, the Flashback Trojan malware is not a virus but a Trojan horse, however that doesn’t mean it is harmless. While a Trojan horse cannot infect other computers, it does make computers vulnerable to data theft or keystroke logging and other harmful activities. The malware gets installed because of the vulnerabilities in Java and once installed it can inject code into Web browsers and applications like Skype (News - Alert) to gain access to passwords and other relevant personal information.

Mike Geise, a senior security researcher at ZScaler says, “The main part of the story is that Mac is not impenetrable to threats— threats exist. Exploits were seen in the wild since around early to mid-March. That has been a full month of lead time to do bad stuff.”

Dr. Web, who was the first one to report the malware, has an online tool which can asses if your Mac is infected or not. This tool can be accessed here. FlashbackChecker available at GitHub also spots the malware. Another way to determine if your computer is infected is to check out the instructions published by Security Company F-Secure (News - Alert), which can be accessed here.