Apple has recently been hit with two highly publicized trojan viruses, ratcheting up the security focus on Apple’s line of Mac computers. The recent trojan viruses have come in two varieties – both of which involve the user being tricked into mistakenly downloading and opening these malicious documents:
- The first masquerades as a PDF containing offensive political statements in Chinese and creates a backdoor that installs malware on a person’s Mac.
- The second trojan virus poses itself as a fake Adobe Flash installer which temporarily attempts to siphon off personal information from the user’s computer sending it back to remote servers.
No Worms in this Apple, Thank You Very Much
Apple has responded with swiftness, quickly updating its central database of malware definitions, which are downloaded daily onto a person’s computer and used to notify users of potentially harmful files that they download. (Note: Malware definitions are only available to users of Apple’s Snow Leopard and Lion operating systems.)
Users who have not yet been affected by these two trojan viruses should automatically receive a warning from the operating system before opening the affected files. Also, it goes without saying that it’s always wise to only download software from sites that you trust but if you think that you’ve been affected, please let LaptopMD+ know and bring your computer in right away.
As a reminder: Apple’s malware alerts should not be considered fixes but simple warnings meant to keep people aware of the type of files they are downloading, providing an extra level of caution. As always, make sure you are downloading the latest software updates from Apple and have installed an anti-virus program on your Mac.
Read more about these trojan viruses from Mac Rumors and CNET.
