Get Smart about Business Spending
Trojan found in pirated Apple iWork software
Internet security firm Intego said on Thursday that it has discovered a new Trojan horse in pirated copies of Apple's iWork '09 productivity software that could allow an attacker to take control of the infected computer.
The Trojan horse, OSX.Trojan.iServices.A, discovered circulating in copies of the software on BitTorrent trackers and other pirate sites, is rated serious, according to Intego's security alert.
When iWork is installed, the Trojan is installed as a start-up item as a part of iWorkServices. It has read-write-execute permissions for root control of the computer, Intego said. The malware connects to a remote server over the Internet and may download additional components to the infected computer.
As of early Thursday, at least 20,000 people had downloaded the iWork '09 installer, according to Intego.
Meanwhile, an Italian researcher has uncovered a way to inject malicious code into memory of OS X-based computers, which would enable attackers to easily hide their activities, according to The Register.
Elinor Mills covers Internet security and privacy. She joined CNET News in 2005 after working as a foreign correspondent for Reuters in Portugal and writing for The Industry Standard, the IDG News Service, and the Associated Press. E-mail Elinor. 
Really a Mac virus could end up being worse than any Windows virus since Mac users have the pretense that they are invincible to viruses.
Time to pull your head out.
---------
More so what else do pirates deserve. It is easy to create a simple script that would destroy your system and screw up your files and execute this through a installer. For that matter I can modify the installer for iWork to do this. Now you would say "How do I trust that the installer from Apple is not cracked?". Look for the SHA or md5. If you do not know what these are then you are screwed.
A trojan is not a virus. Learn the difference, it's pretty substantial.
There is no such thing as an OS that's immune to trojans. Period. Fool the user and it's game over. That's in part why there is no such thing as a "secure" operating system, just "more secure". That's another difference you should figure out. The only really secure computer is disconnected from any and all networks AND power, dismantled, locked in a safe, encased in concrete and lead and sealed inside a vault that itself is encased in concrete and lead. That machine is totally secure (but equally useless).
The other end of the spectrum is a winblows box hooked up to a network.
No, Mac users don't think they're invisible, but they do think that since Windows is the #1 target for all sorts of malware that choosing the not so targeted platform is a better choice (well if that's what they care about most that is).
I think the best approach is to choose a platform that is not the most popular like Linux, Solaris, BeOS (now Haiku), Amiga and etc... The more heterogeneous the computing landscape, the better!
Intego - purveyors of all that is non-issue Mac security issues.
I'm glad - I hope everyone that steals software hoses their Macs and PCs.
Karma I can live with...
MS just laid-off 5k workers...I see who's on top and it's not Windows and the lemmings that use/rely upon it.
You'd be better off comparing Apple with DELL or HP and not Apple vs (DELL + HP + Lenovo + Sony).
MS is so diversified they will waether this. Oh and by the way, something most are overlooking. With the 5000 rolling layoff MS is also adding 3000 to new ventures and expanding other areas.
You computer is as safe you YOU want it to be. I've always used Windows computers and I've NEVER had problems with Viruses, just keep some free antivirus in the background and the click the "Congrats, you're the 1 000 000th visitor" banners that you should be safe.
Your logic makes no sense. You want to compare Apple to a Dell which makes no sense. Apple makes its own hardware and software where as Dell only makes the hardware. So in that case Apple has more responsibility to make their products perform better and be more compatible with their authorized products in order to avoid shame.
(Oh, and fanboys and fan girls are about to turn this otherwise informative story into a total flame war. Too bad.)
How?
Filler at best - must be a slow Obama-worshipper's day...
Does that mean they're foolproof/perfect/without potential to be hacked/exploited?
No.
Don't be a bonehead.
"Similar stealth techniques have existed for more than two years for infecting Windows and Linux machines, but until now, researchers knew of no reliable way to cover their tracks when attacking Macs."
"To be clear, attackers who want to use the technique must first have a reliable exploit for an unpatched vulnerability in OS X or in iTunes, Safari, or some other OS X application. The injection method doesn't make it any easier to pierce a Mac's defenses. It only makes it easier for attackers to cover their tracks once they have."
I don't mean to minimize the danger this poses - suffice it to say Macs WERE the safest (and might be again if Apple figures out a patch against this). I'd argue they're still safer than most systems out there though. Just because a hole was discovered in their armor doesn't mean that armor is suddenly worse than wrapping yourself with a chain link fence.
And let's keep this in perspective - this "hole" only allows them to cover their tracks. It in and of itself doesn't allow them to exploit the machine - just hide their tracks when (if?) they DO find a way to exploit the machine. What scared me most was the exploit vectors this could hide - not only the OS but applications like Safari, iTunes and likely QuickTime (OUCH!). But again, it's not like they can't do this in winblows or Linux already - they just hadn't figured out how to do this in OS X yet - until now.
Still no viruses after all these years. (Please don't show your ignorance by pointing to that article about the trojan attached to pirated iLife '09 copies on TPB - a trojan is not a virus.)
Mac OS X Virus: Inqtana.A Worm
OSX/Inqtana.A is a Java-based worm that exploits the directory traversal vulnerability in the Bluetooth file and object exchange services in Mac OS X 10.4 (Tiger).
Leap.A aka Oompa-Loompa virus
The Leap.A (aka Oompa-Loompa) infects applications in Mac OS X 10.4 (Tiger) running on PowerPC processors.
Your comment is hilarious and stupid at the same time.
Pirated software can have viruses planted in them.
So what if it's a mac. Anything can have viruses these days.
It is like everybody know bird flu killed people; but anyone died of bird flu is still news.
A Trojan is not a virus. A Trojan has to be downloaded, and installed. It cannot spread from one computer (Mac, nor Windows) to another.
If you don't download illegal and/or bootleg (Mac or Windows) software you don't get a Trojan.
Macs are as secure as ever.
Buy a mac, buy legit, and in the long run you actually end up saving money and man hours.
I really don't get where people find prices for OSX, I thought it was included in the "Apple tax"
But then again we pay ~£140 for OSX(~$190)
Ooops...Now that Apple has made billions of dollars out of you dumb illiterate mac users, now you realize you've been lied to and tricked again by Steve Jobs and his gang of iTards again because you didn't bother doing any research. :)
Awell known Mac user who does a radio show said Mac OSX has had hundreds of megabytes of patches recently...more than Vista by far. They are patching holes that could be exploited. Macs just are not a big target like Windows/IE.
You are a classic Windoze user - worked, or wants to work at Geek Squad, has no friends, and built a custom PC to maintain a social life.
Even your name tells the story...wanker.
They took parts from 2 perfectly good operating systems, NeXTSTeP and FreeBSD and hacked them together....so they just about work. The FreeBSD code that they use in Leopard now is about 18 months old and most of the perfectly servicable FreeBSD code has been hacked around by Apple engineers who normally mess it up. It's a big, hacked up mess of an operating system which is full of holes. For example, the 'engineers' at Apple couldn't even implement ASLR in a decent way, it's easily exploitable. OS X suffers from security through obscurity, because nobody cares about it enough to spend any time on it to build a good exploit.
Take Windows for example, people are constantly fuzzing it, reverse engineering it, trying to create an exploit, but given the widespread use of the operating system, there is remarkably few core WIndows exploits released. If OS X was subjected to that kind of attention from the hacking community, it would be game over for it and then all you fanboys would have egg on your faces.
Theres plenty of ways of gaining root priviledges because of Apples shoddy coding which they simply do not know how to fix.
I used OS X externsively, but when you start delving about deeply into it, you realise what a heap of junk it really is and that if you want to do anything other than read email or browse the web, then it doesn't 'just work'.
I still have a Mac in fact, but it runs Windows now. As far as Viruses/Trojans go, i'm not too stupid to download them, my box is firewalled and I have a decent Antivirus. I'd rather use an operating system that is; 1, Useful (I still cannot see the use for OS X), and 2, Is relatively bug free and much more secure than OS X.
How does that work since NeXTSTeP was based on freebsd from the start?
Just didnt like the band wagons those that consider themself techies like to jump on whether linux, mac, or windows(and yes there is actually one for MS) I prefer to be neutral on this part, but could never really prove some of my points lol
Just a comment to some ppl before I get bashed by zealots from either camp, I HAVE used most of the windows platform, Mac OS X, the older mac(not sure what they were called back then), and linux(fedora, red hat, linpus, ubuntu)... And up until now most of the OS crash by 3rd party apps, (except for 9x family including ME =.=)
Meanwhile.. security researchers are still counting in the MILLIONS how many windows boxes are currently spreading around the "Conficker" virus... and they are now thinking that Vista and WINDOWS 7 computers are vulnerable. Windows 7 isn't even commercially available and it's getting viruses.
Mac OS X Virus: Inqtana.A Worm
OSX/Inqtana.A is a Java-based worm that exploits the directory traversal vulnerability in the Bluetooth file and object exchange services in Mac OS X 10.4 (Tiger).
Leap.A aka Oompa-Loompa virus
The Leap.A (aka Oompa-Loompa) infects applications in Mac OS X 10.4 (Tiger) running on PowerPC processors.
Oompa-loompa worm, not virus transmitted itself through a psuedo jpeg. When you open it, it requires an admin password. The thing is that half the mac users I know dont even know what their admin passwords are and the ones who do know would get suspicious if a picture from an unknown source asked for their admin password to open it. This also was fixed in an update that warns the user if a program is disquised as another file type. Then asks if the user would like to run the program.
The Inqantan.A worm was a proof of concept hack that used a vulnerbility in the bluetooth stack, patched in 2005. The simpsons worm only worked on os 9 which was released in 1999...
The exploit that zibri found a couple of months ago that could crash quicktime from a bufferoverflow, has now been fixed.
The exploit used in pwn to own was fixed in a safari update.
So, I will now go into the only proven way to exploit mac os x...
Social Engineering.
That is what this attack is. It uses the concept that the biggest security risk is in between the keyboard and chair. If an attacker can get the user to enter the admin password then the computer is at the attackers will. No system is secure... Using social engineering I could make a shell script for linux that would delete the boot partition, send all their contacts an email and restart the computer. The way that most viruses get onto windows is via internet explorer and windows media player which operate deep in the system. Using other programs for browsing and media eliminates about 70% of the viruses for windows.
@ferretboy88
what exactly do you think viruses are for? Tell me does it do any good for a cracker to just destroy as many computers as he/she possibly can? The way virus makers make money is buy using the personal info that they gather from infected computers. The least damage that the virus causes the less detectable it is by the user which equates to more info for the maker of the virus. I always frown on the people who say "I have been using windows since 1995 without anti-virus and I still have no viruses" the Chances are they do and do not know it.
Linux is the most secure os right now. Because of three factors.
1. It has a rock solid unix foundation with strict per application permissions.
2 It has a relatively small market share
3. Open source community fixes exploits fast.
Macintosh is the second most secure consumer os because,
1 It has the same unix core...
2. Apple fixes expoits fairly fast.
And thank you for reading my rant.
you are a moron. conficker isnt a virus by your definition either, its malware. its does the exact same thing as this one does for macs, that is, allows control of your computer remotely. learn the facts.
http://www.securemac.com/
- by Notoapplefanbois January 23, 2009 12:19 PM PST
- tbh i'm more amazed that there were 20,000 mac users who downloaded it when the stereotype mac owner is a rich dumb S***, I guess the 'crunch' is hitting crapple more than I thought
- Reply to this comment
-
-
- by 0zSpit January 23, 2009 2:46 PM PST
- ha haa, they're like ray-ray who drives a cadillac but lives in a ghetto
-
-
Showing 1 of 2 pages (87 Comments)