Mac Flashback Trojan: Fast and Easy Check to See If You’re Infected
If you’ve heard news recently about the Mac Flashback Trojan, there are a few nice posts from Mashable that I found pretty helpful.
There’s a way you can check your Mac, to see if it’s infected, using the command line. If you’re not so comfortable doing this (and I’m not so much), Mashable has bundled everything into two scripts you can download and run.
While I would normally advise against downloading and running random AppleScripts… Mashable is a trusted source, and I don’t think there’s anything to worry about here.
In the off chance that you do have a Mac that’s infected, never fear – there are removal instructions over at F-Secure.
[CC photo via pursuethepassion]
Related:
The Enemy Within: Fascinating Article About The Conficker Computer Worm
Politics And The Stuxnet Worm: A Declaration Of Cyber-War
Flash Experiment: Virus
So does this mean that the immunity that has long characterized Macs is no more? Has the mysterious wall that has protected them from viruses and all things malware been breached? Does this mean more badness is likely to come to Macs?
juliet (April 9, 2012 at 11:32 pm)That’s a really good question. I haven’t read up on what others are saying, but I don’t think this necessarily heralds in a new wave of Mac viruses.
This Flashback Trojan isn’t the first thing to hit the radar as Mac-specific malware. There have been others in the past, but they’ve all been exceedingly rare. This trojan is making news due to how many computers it’s been able to infect.
There is such a thing as Mac Anti-Virus software (we run it at work). But man, I hope it doesn’t ever come to that. Most friends I know that own Macs don’t bother with such a thing. I hope that we can continue without having to be too concerned about viruses and trojans, and all those other things that go bump in the night.
There may be a future time when we will need to start worrying about running anti-virus software. But I’m hoping we have a few more years yet.
avoision (April 10, 2012 at 12:06 am)