As most of you already know, there is a little buzz in the air (again) about MAC viruses and malware in the wild. There are several recent articles - predominately by WINDOWS bloggers and columnists. Many "report" that such entities are out there infecting MACS . . . but I have yet to find anyone EXPLAIN the ACTUAL harm these are causing (if, in fact, these do exist).

Is anyone of sound mind and body able to describe what is known to be out there and what specific damage these are causing for MAC users? (Looking to hear from 'Voices of Reason' and not from "alarmists.")

Thanks a bunch for any clarification . . . and piece of mind . . . and fixes (if needed) . . . that anyone can provide.

Check out the latest discussions in THE CYBER-SECURITY THREAD in the Lounge.

The current Flashback-variant trojan issue starts with this post. This malware can gain access to Macs via unpatched Java vulnerabilities.

The initial problem with this Trojan is that it hijacks the [Safari] browser every time it launches and redirects the user to a targeted website, but there is the more alarming potential to eavesdrop on your computer and internet activities, and send home the goodies including passwords etc.

The number of 500,000-600,000 infected Macs that goes around is allegedly based on telltale individual signatures of those Macs, comes from a relatively obscure Russian anti-malware site, but has not yet been substantiated or confirmed by others*. But that shouldn't detract from the threat, which is real and 'live in the wild'.

*) But see Flashfake Mac OS X botnet confirmed.

MG2009,

In case the following might give you peace of mind . . . .

I used information from - How to remove the Flashback malware from OS X - under the section "How do I detect it?" - to see what Terminal reported for my Mac OS X 10.6.8 system.

I copied and pasted the three lines from the above link and section which began with
defaults read
into Terminal and pressed enter.

Three results stating "does not exist" were returned.

Then I did the same for
ls -la ~/../Shared/.*.so

"No such file or directory" was returned.

As far as I know, my system has all of the available updates installed.

And for those a bit shy with Terminal, an Applescript has been posted on this blog that does the same. The author gives a link to download the script and also provides the full text of the script.

Scripts scare me far more than Terminal.
Former is way too complicated ~ opaque to a simple-minded user like me ... as FTMers and MFIers might remember from way back when.
At least I can cut-and-paste Terminal commands quasi-fearlessly ... as I did and reported in THE CYBER-SECURITY THREAD — with the same results as dianne.

Seems to me that this is a great opportunity to try a script and get a feel for what's involved in running them (for giggles, compare the search terms in the script with your Terminal strings). After all, some Flashback detector scripts have been tested by others here (including myself) and work as advertised. Just follow the instructions at the bottom of this post.

Thanks, Dianne.

I followed the TERMINAL instructions, as outlined, and got the same results as Dianne. (All looks clean to me.)

Me too....ditto on the thanks, dianne.