Adam O"Donnel at Zdnet.com commented back in December 2008
that the Mac OS will have malware (bad software), sooner or later. Well I don't
know what you call sooner or later. I do know whatever you call it, it has
arrived.
While the R&D engineer is a PhD, I don't think you need
to be a rocket scientist to follow his thoughts. He said: "The reality is that
mass market malware writers don't care about novel attack code anymore. They
also don't care about who is running the most vulnerable services. They do care
about writing programs that look like legitimate applications that will trick the end user into voluntarily installing them. When the bad guy's
target is the human being at the console, then his only decision becomes what
is the size of the target to go after."
Once again, it comes back to what the security folks call "social
engineering". And once again, it worked. It turns out that pirated copies of
iWork 2009 have bot net code.
Botnets are used to perform DDoS attacks on systems, gather
sensitive
personal information, and send out a majority of the spam. The iServices has
two variations, which are OSX.Trojan.iServices.A and OSX.Trojan.iServices.B
From a code standpoint, it's a devil of might. The two
researchers from Symantec Mario Ballano Barcena and Alfredo Pesoli, state that the
malware has peer-to-peer communication, remote start-up, and encryption
capabilities.
Please understand I am not knocking OSX security that Apple
has put in there. And if I agree on the screen, there is nothing the OS can do
but comply.
Some time ago, over at GetCertify4Less.com, I said it would
only be a matter of time before Apple got a serious malware infection. That is
because the iPhone is a computer. A computer running OSX. Given anybody can buy
an iPhone at Wal-Mart; it creates the market share for the bad guys to create a
bot net (or other malware).
So what can we do? Two things. Stop responding to emails
from people we don't know. The bad guys
are either trying to get you to go to an infected web site, or infect your
computer with an attachment.
The second option is they are trying to sell you something. Anything
from penny stocks in a ‘bump and dump' scheme (the actual company gets hurt as
bad as the quick investor), to magic pills.
A recent study finds that spam emails use enough electricity
to support 2.4 million homes a year. Until we collectively ‘wise up', and stop
looking for some ‘easy out', the bot nets and spam will continue.
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