Apple Gets Malware In The Wild

Sun, 19 Apr 2009 16:05:41 EST

Adam O"Donnel at Zdnet.com commented back in December 2008that the Mac OS will have malware (bad software), sooner or later. Well I don'tknow what you call sooner or later. I do know whatever you call it, it hasarrived.

While the R&D engineer is a PhD, I don't think you needto be a rocket scientist to follow his thoughts. He said: "The reality is thatmass market malware writers don't care about novel attack code anymore. Theyalso don't care about who is running the most vulnerable services. They do careabout writing programs that look like legitimate applications that will trick the end user into voluntarily installing them. When the bad guy'starget is the human being at the console, then his only decision becomes whatis the size of the target to go after."

Once again, it comes back to what the security folks call "socialengineering". And once again, it worked. It turns out that pirated copies ofiWork 2009 have bot net code.

Botnets are used to perform DDoS attacks on systems, gathersensitive
personal information, and send out a majority of the spam. The iServices hastwo variations, which are OSX.Trojan.iServices.A and OSX.Trojan.iServices.B

From a code standpoint, it's a devil of might. The tworesearchers from Symantec Mario Ballano Barcena and Alfredo Pesoli, state that themalware has peer-to-peer communication, remote start-up, and encryptioncapabilities.

Please understand I am not knocking OSX security that Applehas put in there. And if I agree on the screen, there is nothing the OS can dobut comply.

Some time ago, over at GetCertify4Less.com, I said it wouldonly be a matter of time before Apple got a serious malware infection. That isbecause the iPhone is a computer. A computer running OSX. Given anybody can buyan iPhone at Wal-Mart; it creates the market share for the bad guys to create abot net (or other malware).

So what can we do? Two things. Stop responding to emailsfrom people we don't know. The bad guysare either trying to get you to go to an infected web site, or infect yourcomputer with an attachment.

The second option is they are trying to sell you something. Anythingfrom penny stocks in a ‘bump and dump' scheme (the actual company gets hurt asbad as the quick investor), to magic pills.

A recent study finds that spam emails use enough electricityto support 2.4 million homes a year. Until we collectively ‘wise up', and stoplooking for some ‘easy out', the bot nets and spam will continue.

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Apple Gets Malware In The Wild