Thursday, April 16, 2009

First Macintosh botnet found

A botnet is a collection of remote-controlled malware agents that are surreptitiously installed on a user's computer. The remote controller typically uses the now-controlled computer to send spam or steal credit card and bank account numbers. Botnets have been exclusively on Windows computers - because of large market share and weak security. Until now.

All you Windows fanboys can stop grinning now. OK, go ahead and grin - this day's been a'comin' for a while.

Anyone want to guess how the bots got installed? Anyone? OK, here's a hint: Borepatch's First Law: "Free Download" is Internet-Security speak for "Open your mouth and close your eyes."

The botnet comes courtesy of two trojans dubbed OSX.Trojan.iServices.A and OSX.Trojan.iServices.B by Mac anti-virus provider Intego, which first documented them in January. The malware is surreptitiously included in copies of Apple's iWork 09 productivity suite and Adobe's Photoshop CS4 that are distributed on warez sites. Intego said three months ago more than 20,000 people had downloaded the rogue installers.
As Ron White would say, "You can't fix stupid."

Windows fanboys are still grinning, I see. So for all of them - and smugly over-confident Mac fanboys - offered for your consideration:

2 comments:

  1. TamApril 17, 2009 at 7:56 AM

    It never fails to amaze me that people will download just about anything from anyone. Or open attachments from strangers. (Heck, I can count the number of people I'd open an email attachment from on the fingers of one hand...)

    But then again, 409 scams have people who bite, too.

    (Back in the day, when my roommate's Turbo XT with a 20 meg disk and 1200 baud modem was the shizznit, he actually left the cover off his machine and would physically unplug the hard drive before downloading software from BBS's. This was back in '88. It stuck with me.)

    ReplyDelete
  2. BorepatchApril 17, 2009 at 8:12 AM

    But, but, I really want to see those pictures of Anna Kournikova! Where are the pictures???!

    Sigh.

    ReplyDelete

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