First Mac Botnet Activated, Engages in DDoS Attacks
Linked by Thom Holwerda on Sat 18th Apr 2009 09:27 UTC
Mac OS X Remember the Mac trojan that we reported about earlier this year? A trojan was found piggybacking on the back of copies of iWork and Photoshop CS4 found on warez sites and networks, and it would install itself after the user had entered his or her administrator password during the software's installation. This trojan didn't seem like much of a threat back then, but as it turns out, it's now in use in the first Macintosh botnet.
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RE[3]: hmm
by FealDorf on Sat 18th Apr 2009 14:24 UTC in reply to "RE[2]: hmm"
FealDorf
Member since:
2008-01-07

Whoops, was away a bit too long.

@sbenitezb
Virii get in without users' need? Besides Conficker I can't recall a good case. XP's security sucks; no doubt. But I'm not referring to XP. Even in XP; avoiding IE + Autoplay was all it took for me to skip any virii ending up on my laptop for over 2 years.

Your analogy applies just as good for Vista. Nevertheless I don't like analogies to prove a point, they're generally good for teaching only.. IMO

As for the security; take a look at the Miller's interview. Whether you think he's a scumbag or not; the precautions he mentions taken by vista are much superior. There you have it, your "design". On the other hand; how is "leopard's design" any better?

@kaiwai: Seconded.

Edited 2009-04-18 14:28 UTC

Reply Parent Score: 1

RE[4]: hmm
by sbenitezb on Sat 18th Apr 2009 15:23 in reply to "RE[3]: hmm"
sbenitezb Member since:
2005-07-22

Quit saying virii. The english plural is viruses. And the latin plural is not -ii.

Reply Parent Score: 2

RE[5]: hmm
by lemur2 on Sat 18th Apr 2009 15:32 in reply to "RE[4]: hmm"
lemur2 Member since:
2007-02-17

Quit saying virii. The english plural is viruses. And the latin plural is not -ii.


And, just a reminder ... it wasn't even a virus in this case. It was a trojan. That means that people downloaded it, deliberately, themselves, from an untrustworthy source, installed it without having any idea at all of its integrity, and ignored any warnings that popped up while they did so.

No system can survive stupidity like that.

The only possible "defense" is to avoid installing closed-source applications in which malware can be hidden.

Edited 2009-04-18 15:32 UTC

Reply Parent Score: 2

RE[5]: hmm
by darknexus on Sat 18th Apr 2009 16:22 in reply to "RE[4]: hmm"
darknexus Member since:
2008-07-15

Thing about that is... it would only work if the os in question uses a package manager. OS X doesn't, neither does Windows, and I'd hate to see what Apple might attempt to do if they built a central package manager into OS X. Mac App Store and jailbreaking, anyone?

Reply Parent Score: 3

RE[5]: hmm
by FealDorf on Sat 18th Apr 2009 19:20 in reply to "RE[4]: hmm"
FealDorf Member since:
2008-01-07

@sbenitezb: about virus...es, it was something of a fetish ;)
@Kroc: MD5!?! Why would a general user go through something as geeky as checking the MD5 hash?

@werpu: No -- an anti-malware is NOT an anti-virus. Also; wha!? Did you even use vista?!?

I second darknexus, all it takes is a serial-key..

Reply Parent Score: 1

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