Well, well, well… although we have been saying it ever since the first Macs with Intel CPUs rolled off the lines in the Foxconn factories in China it seems like the world is finally realizing that the Mac IS a PC just running a different OS. The first kick in the head was delivered when the Flashback Malware hit the streets in the form of a fake flash installer which made any infected Mac part of a global botnet.As we have told you before this botnet hit 600,000+ systems before Apple, Kaspersky, F-Secure and others came up with tools that were supposed to identify and then remove the infection. Apple also released two separate patches to prevent infection by this very nasty malware for the “other PCs” out there.
Now it seems that the writers of Flashback have decided to throw a curve to all of the Mac users out there (and Apple too). A new variant of the Flashback Trojan has been identifies that can install itself without any user interaction at all. The original version would ask for the user to enter the admin password for authentication. Even if you did not enter it you still got the virus, it is just that not entering the password made it a bit nastier in terms of what it did to your system. Now there is no option for a password and the malware goes in and still turns off the built in security.
Although Apple has released a patch for this there are reports that very few have installed the patch (a very small number of systems have even checked to see if they are infected). This could be a by-product of the mythology that Steve Jobs created stating that due to the controlled nature of the OS people were not going to get viruses. In part it was true back in the RISC days of the PowerPC and G4/5 CPUs. Now that there is Intel inside the Mac is just another PC offered up there as a target for malicious coders. In many ways they are an even bigger target now that the word has gotten out about some of the bigger security holes in the root of the OS and the default browser Safari.
It is pretty clear that the worst is yet to come for the Mac in terms of Malware and security. Apple was one of the companies that Supported SOPA, PIPA and if rumor is true are also supporting CISPA. That makes them the bad guy in many people’s eye. True grabbing banking information and passwords is not Anonymous’ style (as it is counterproductive) using a bunch of Macs in a giant botnet against supporters of CISPA does have a certain style to it don’t you think?
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