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A while ago I wrote about "The End of Innocence" for Mac users. The appearance of the first highly successful Mac Trojan prompted me to write it and to postulate that in short order Macs would be over run by viruses as the vast majority of them are completely unprotected and most Mac users falsely believe that they are bullet proof.
It has taken a little longer then I postulated but the time has indeed come. The "FlashBack" Trojan has infected over half a million Macs at the time of writing this article. A huge success like that will only embolden those writing Trojans/Viruses for Macs.
Not only has FlashBack been hugely successful. It is a much more advanced Trojan then MacDefender was. FlashBack does not require the user to enter their admin password to infect a system. It also makes the infected system part of a bot-net.
While all this is going on there are other threats looming such as "BlackHole RAT" which not only infects the users Mac but leaves behind a "RAT" (Remote Access Toolkit) or backdoor which gives the bad guys full access to the infected Mac.
Last summer may not have been the "Summer of Hell" I thought it might be for Mac users but if this trend continues, and if Mac users do not change their behaviour and quickly this summer could well be.
Now that we have all the doom and gloom out of the way here are things you can do:
Spread the word. Help educate other Mac users about the threat
Stop believing you are bullet proof. It clearly isn't the case
Install Anti-Virus Software
Change your behaviour. Learn to be more suspicious of things.
Secure you Mac
Remove Java if you don't need it
Keep fully patched
Basically it's time for all Mac owners to Armour Up!!
Linux users should also be keeping a close eye on this situation as they represent the next group of people that believe that they are bulletproof. Although right now we don't represent that big a market share and so may be under the radar. But still we all should consider this a wake up call.
Stay Safe out There!!
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This site by Freemor is licensed under a Creative
Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.5 Canada License.
Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available at
http://freemor.ca/Contact.htm.