The times where Mac users were relatively safe from malicious attacks is long gone. As we all know, no system is secure and everything can be broken, it’s just a matter it being worth the effort. With the ever-growing number of people using Macs and the amount who still believe the old wives’ tale that Macs are safe, this is an obvious target.
The Russian security company Dr.Web has discovered a large and previous unknown botnet composed out of Mac OS X machines. The criminals are taking advantage of a security flaw in the system and effectively gain full control over the target system. From here the malware can attempt to infect more systems or carry out any other command sent by the botnet owners.
One of the interesting things about this piece of malware is that it communicates with its control servers via Reddit. It uses the search function to find comments left the criminals in a Minecraft discussion section, and it’s from there the network will get its commands.
The good news is, you can defend yourself against this. Dr.Web have already added the Mac.BackDoor.iWorm to their database and other security software creators are sure to follow soon. Botnets like these can do a lot of things, where the most common are to send out spam mails and run denial of service attacks. The second part of the good news is that it doesn’t look like the network is being used in any ongoing attacks. But that is of course a thing that could change at any time.
The main part of the infected systems are located in North America, but that isn’t really surprising. This is where the most systems are located, but the botnet is however worldwide and counted over 17.500 infected machines as of last Friday. This is a great reminder to everyone to run security software. It doesn’t matter if you’re using a mobile device or a PC running Mac OS, Linux/Unix or Windows. Everyone can be a target.
Thank you Dr.Web for providing us with these information
Images courtesy of Dr.Web
