Mac Viruses Continue to Lag Behind Windows Counterparts
Quite a few software makers routinely release Windows versions ahead of Mac flavors — Skype, Google Chrome and Adobe Photoshop Elements to name a few — and now it seems that poor Mac users can’t even get a decent virus that’s on par with the threats Windows users face.
Yes, that’s right, there’s a new Mac virus lurking out there in the wild, but unless you’re incredibly stupid there’s no need to worry. The virus is technically a trojan, named Lamzev-A, which creates a backdoor for attackers to take over your Mac. At the moment the trojan disguises itself as video codec on what The Register calls “grumble flick” sites — that’d be porn to you and me.
Of course setting the new trojan loose requires quite a few steps on your part, first you need to download the file, then launch the resulting .dmg. Once the disk image is mounted, the hapless victim then launches the app, which proceeds to create the backdoor.
Along the way OS X will alert you that you just downloaded an unknown app and you might want to think twice about running it. Do people really install codec files from porn sites? Probably, but not many. In any case Trend Micro has already updated its software, so if you suspect you’ve been a victim of Lamzev-A try the online scanner.
While this may not a be a serious threat, jokes aside, it should be a reminder that, just because you’re running OS X doesn’t mean you’re totally immune. Just like we have no doubt Google will get around to release Chrome for Mac, there’s also a good change malware authors will get around to writing something truly scary for OS X.
After all, the very first computer virus was written for an Apple machine.
[Awesome iMac virus image courtesy of Trend Micro]
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