If you’ve been following the
tech news over the past few days, you’ve probably seen a few mentions of
the Flashback trojan. It’s been said that over 550,000 Macs have been
infected, which is a staggering amount considering the relative safety
(or at least the perceived safety) of OS X. The malicious software has
been known of for a few months now — it disguised itself as a Flash
installer, making it seem like an innocuous addition to your computer,
when it was anything but.
But how to do you find out if your Mac is infected with Flashback?
It’s surprisingly easy — a tool that will diagnose your computer is
available
here. You just need to
download it, unzip the package, and then run the two applications
within. Hopefully you’ll see something like this:
If you were affect, the removal process is outlined
here. F-Secure’s instructions look pretty complex, they mostly involve finding the terminal and then copying and pasting.
And, don’t worry, the good folks at Apple are on top of the issue. An
update made available today, known as Java for OS X 2012-002, will
address the problem. It might seems like a nondescript OS update but it
includes two important components. The eponymous one is a Java update
that brings Java SE 6 to version 1.6.0_31. The other,
HT1222,
is the security component, though no explanation is offered as to what
was specifically changed aside from it dealing with Java.
This is the
second update
Apple has issued in response to Flashback. And, this time, only OS X
10.7 (Lion) systems received the patch. Java for OS X 2012-002 is
available now and does not require a restart. OS X Lion users simply
need to go to the Apple icon (on the top left) and then choose “Software
Update” to get it.
While Macs are affected, the malware exploits a flaw in Java not OS X
specifically (though Apple maintains its own version of Java, so you
can look at the situation either way). Even so, this can be seen as a
sign of things to come for Mac users — as the operating system get more
popular the computers using it will increasingly be a target for attacks
like this one. The install base is still relatively small compared to
that of Windows, but it’s large enough that OS X is a worthwhile target.
The days of OS X users gallivanting around the internet with impunity
are over, so get some security software and think twice about what you
install.