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.