Days after as many as 600,000 Mac computers were attacked by the Backdoor. Flashback.39 malware, Apple issued an update which patched the security hole that allowed the attack to be executed in the background whilst the user remained unaware.
The malware was first reported by Russian Security firm Doctor Web who said that most of the affected people were in the U.S and in Canada. They added that unless users do not apply the patch that was issued by Apple, they remained at risk.
Doctor Web also took this opportunity to point fingers at experts who had claimed that there are no cyber threats to systems running Mac OS X. The only reason Macs remained an unattractive proposition for hackers to write malware for was because of the rather low market share they had compared to Windows based PC’s. Of late though, Mac’s have begun to increase their share and has thereby come into the radar of malware makers.
As for this latest attack, it required little interaction from the user end to initiate the attack. All that was required was to visit an affected webpage and the malware executed itself in the background. Apple has thus far remained silent on the attack – and except for releasing this patch there have been no comments from them regarding this threat.
Anyway, if you happen to be a Mac User, it’s time you took those updates seriously. And yes, the next time you ridicule a Windows user for using an unsafe OS, think again!
