Over 600,000 Macs infected with Flashback botnet, patch released

Dr. Web map notes the percentage of Flashback infections by country.

/ Dr. Web

(CNET) More than half a million Macs are infected with the Flashback Trojan, a malware package designed to steal personal information, according to Russian antivirus company Dr. Web.

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Dr. Web originally reported Wednesday that 550,000 Macintosh computers were infected by the growing Mac botnet. But later in the day, Dr. Web malware analyst Sorokin Ivan announced on Twitter that the number of Macs infected with Flashback had increased to 600,000, with 274 of those based in Cupertino, Calif.

@mikko, at this moment botnet Flashback over 600k, include 274 bots from Cupertino and special for you Mikko - 285 from Finland

-- Sorokin Ivan (@hexminer) April 4, 2012

More than half of the Macs infected are in the United States (57 percent), while another 20 percent are in Canada, Dr. Web said.

The

Another OS X Trojan imitates Adobe Flash installer

In the wake of the latest OS X Trojan, a new one has surfaced that disguises itself as an Adobe Flash Player installer.

masquerading as a fake Adobe Flash Player plug-in installer, but in the past few months it has evolved to exploiting Java vulnerabilities to target Mac systems. A new variant that surfaced over the weekend appears to be taking advantage of Java vulnerability for which

Java update for OS X patches Flashback malware exploit

Tuesday.

Related stories

• Who wrote the Flashback Trojan?
• Flashback malware for OS X appears to be going extinct
• Apple's iOS and Android are new favorite malware victims

As

Detecting and removing the Flashback malware in OS X

, simply visiting a malicious Web site containing Flashback on an OS X system with Java installed will result in one of two installation routes. The malware will request an administrator password, and if one is supplied, it will install its package of code into the Applications folder. If a password is not offered, the malware will install to the user accounts where it can run in a more global manner.

Once installed, the Flashback will inject code into Web browsers and other applications like Skype to harvest passwords and other information from those program's users.

Security company F-Secure has published instructions on how to determine whether a Mac is infected with Flashback.

This article first appeared at CNET under the headline "More than 600,000 Macs infected with Flashback botnet."

[Alex_Horan]

The security industry has known for years Apple's claims to attack immunity is a fairy tale. The fact that Mac sales have been increasing while those of PC manufactures have only been steady tells me this is the beginning of attacks against Mac devices. I've written a blog post with my take on Apple's new pro-anti-virus stance - and why defensive tactics like AV won't work - here: http://blog.coresecurity.com/2012/04/05/apple-is-not-immune-to-hacks/