Apple Admits Its Macs Have a Malware Problem

From DailyTech: Apple has finally owned up to the fact that many of its users' machines have been afflicted by crippling malware. And it promises that it's working on a fix. But experts wonder if the company is simply acting in a reactionary fashion or is ready to finally get serious about protecting its users.

Apple, Inc. (AAPL) long avoided such woes, thanks to its small market share and specialized OS code, which precluded stock PC malware from running on a Mac. But the company's base security model is in theory no more secure, and -- perhaps driven by rising market share -- of late the company has grappled with serious trojan issues.

The latest fire facing the Mac community is "Flashback", also knows as "Flashfake". This Trojan has evolved over multiple variants to its current form, which masquerades as an install Java applet on hijacked websites. Customers who approve it unwittingly run a piece of code that exploits a flaw in Oracle Corp.'s (ORCL) Java platform in order to remove OS X's limited anti-malware capabilities and install back-door control programs.

The affected machines are turned into bots, which the attackers can use to spew spam or commit other foul acts. Kaspersky Labs' Igor Soumenkov told Reuters in an interview that at its peak, Flashback had infected 600,000 machines, including roughly 300,000 in the U.S. Approximately 98 percent of those machines were Macs.

View: Article @ Source Site