Friday 13 July 2012

How 'Flashback Virus' Affected Mac?


Mac systems are safe and secure when compared to the Windows and other operating systems. Mac OS X has been developed in UNIX Kernal and this make them safe enough. Mac has a good security against malware and viruses. Mac users count is much less than the windows user so Mac products are not a big target for viruses. But inspite of this, Mac too has been affected by virus & malwares number of times in the past.

In the September 2011, Mac systems got affected by a malware called “Flashback Virus”. This virus comes into action around end of september last year. Flashback virus pretended to be an installer of Adobe Flashplayer. Mac user downloaded this virus thinking it was Adobe flash player and got affected by the virus. The flashback trojan was designed to steal the personal information of the users of Mac System. Apple discontinued providing Adobe flash player with Mac OS X a year ago so to view flash related sites Mac users downloaded this virus thinking of it as a flashplayer.

    1)This is the main window of the flashback trojan malware depicting as flash software


The flashback virus puts codes in the applications and these codes will get executed when the application starts and then screenshots and other personal information will be sent to the remote server without the knowledge of the user. So, this way this virus steals the confidential and personal information of Mac users. It is estimated that around 600,000 Macs are infected by this virus till now.

Apple has a software to protect Mac from virus, malware and other suspicious things. It's called as Xprotect. Apple has updated its software twice to protect Mac from flash trojan in best possible way. But after this Apple update, malware updates comes which infects Mac by befooling Xprotect security tool. Then on April 3, Apple java update comes which removes the possiblity of flashback trojan to affect the Mac. These java related security update is only available on Mas OS X 10.6.8 and upgraded version. So versions before the OS X 10.6.8 are still vulnerable to the flashback trojan.