More than 600,000 Macs infected with Flashback botnet

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Russian antivirus company says half the computers infected with malware designed to steal personal information are in the U.S. -- with 274 located in Cupertino.

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More than half a million Macs are infected with the Flashback Trojan, a malware package designed to steal personal information, according to a Russian antivirus company.

The company -- Dr. Web -- originally reported today that 550,000 Macintosh computers were infected by the growing Mac botnet. But later in the day, Dr. Web malware analyst Sorokin Ivan announced on Twitter that the number of Macs infected with Flashback had increased to 600,000, with 274 of those based in Cupertino, Calif.

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More than half of the Macs infected are in the United States (57 percent), while another 20 percent are in Canada, Dr. Web said.

The malware was initially found in September 2011 masquerading as a fake Adobe Flash Player plug-in installer, but in the past few months it has evolved to exploiting Java vulnerabilities to target Mac systems. A new variant that surfaced over the weekend appears to be taking advantage of Java vulnerability for which Apple released a patch yesterday.

Source: http://news.cnet.com/8301-1009_3-57409619-83/more-than-600000-macs-infected-with-flashback-botnet/?tag=mncol;1n
 
I find that mac owners are generally unaware of the potential they have to get virus's. It's not as if the OS is amazing and can't get virus's, it's more like people develop virus's for windows more often as windows computers are much more widely used, meaning that a virus made for windows will infect more computers. This just shows that someone took the time to make a virus for mac's.
Also, it's not like I'm saying windows is the best OS in the world either. It has tons of issues but overall, if you're smart about the things you download, the sites you visit and the antivirus/malware software that you have, you won't have major issues.

Oh and Mac's are overpriced. By a lot. 'nuff said.
 
The OS isn't a supergod of all Operating Systems and cannot get viruses, quite the contrary as you stated. It seems less likely, however, that you're going to have malware on your overpriced (but sexy) Apple Mac though.

All you have to do is look for faults in the system or its applications and exploit the crap out of them - I just didn't see it happening for Macs.
 
SovareZza said:
Hahahahahahahaha

Still better than the number of trojans and viruses available for Windows.

Apple: 1
Microsoft: 0
Click to expand...

Let's talk again in 2-3 years.

Fries said:
I find that mac owners are generally unaware of the potential they have to get virus's. It's not as if the OS is amazing and can't get virus's, it's more like people develop virus's for windows more often as windows computers are much more widely used, meaning that a virus made for windows will infect more computers. This just shows that someone took the time to make a virus for mac's.
Also, it's not like I'm saying windows is the best OS in the world either. It has tons of issues but overall, if you're smart about the things you download, the sites you visit and the antivirus/malware software that you have, you won't have major issues.

Oh and Mac's are overpriced. By a lot. 'nuff said.
Click to expand...

True.
Common sense is the best AV.
 
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