Sophos: Mac OS X Trojan horse aims to make money from Mac users
Posted by Dennis Sellers 
Apr 2, 2008 at 4:21pm
The folks at SophosLabs are advising the Mac community not to panic following the discovery of another Trojan horse for the Mac OS X platform.
The Trojan, named Troj/MacSwp-B (also known as Imunizator), tries to scare Mac users into purchasing unnecessary software by claiming that privacy issues have been discovered on the computer.
“Windows users are no stranger to scareware like this, but it is rarer on the Apple Macintosh,” says Graham Cluley, senior technology consultant for Sophos. “Nevertheless MacSwp-B’s discovery does follow fast on the heels of other malware that has been identitifed on the Mac OS X platform in recent months. Cybercrime against Mac users may be small in comparison to Windows attacks, but it is growing. Apple Macintosh users need to learn from the mistakes made by their Windows cousins in the past and ensure that they have defenses in place, are up-to-date with patches and exercise caution about what they run on their computer.”
Sophos experts note that the new Trojan horse is closely related to another piece of Mac scareware, MacSweeper, which was being deployed in an attack via online adverts on British TV websites last month. Earlier this week, Sophos reported that a man has been accused of breaking anti-spyware laws by allegedly scaring people into purchasing bogus Windows security software. Criminal attacks against Mac users, although much rarer, have become more motivated by money since late 2007.
“Macsimum News” is a proud supporter of Planet Gumbo, which feeds the hungry. We urge you to help them in their efforts.
Macsimum Media Partners: AppleHeads, MacOSG, Mac Night Owl, setteB.IT, MacNotables, MacVoices, MacGeneration, Church of Mac
Article Information
Comment on this Article Print this Article Email this Article Digg This
Contributor
Dennis Sellers
Dennis has been a newspaper editor/reporter (seven years) and teacher (seven years). He has over 4,000 magazine, newspaper and online articles to his credit. He has also covered the Mac and tech industries for over a decade for such online publications as MacCentral, MacMinute and now MacsimumNews.
Recent Articles
