ESET Threat Blog

A new attack against Apple Mac OS X Lion (10.7) has been detected by Intego.  The threat is a trojan, dubbed Flashback, installed via a fake Adobe Flash installer downloaded from a third party site.
As with the MacDefender and Revir malware the Flashback attack uses social engineering to entice the user to download then install the … Read More…

 
A new trojan has been released targeting the Macintosh Chinese-language user community.  The trojan appears to the user to be a PDF containing a Chinese language article on the long-running dispute over whether Japan or China owns the Diaoyu Islands.  
When the user opens the “PDF” file, it attempts to mask the installation of a … Read More…

The MacDefender malware has morphed again, now taking the guise of "MacShield."   As in the case of its oldest sibling MacDefender, the MacShield variant has taken the name of a legitimate Mac OSX software product with small distribution, doubtless causing the real developer significant heartache.
The UI is essentially unchanged, but as usual all of … Read More…

In the last few days, I have been asked by a journalist (or four) what MacDefender means for the future of Apple security, and if I thought there was excess hype around it.  
I'll address the second question first.   I think its safe to say the current malware would not be newsworthy if it … Read More…

The recent MacDefender Trojan has been receiving “rebranding” facelifts since it came out. It has now been deployed as MacProtector, MacDetector, MacSecurity, Apple Security Center, and there are no doubt more iterations to come. The malware has been updated, and now sports an improved UI that looks like a native Mac OSX application, unlike the … Read More…

A flurry of long-overdue government initiatives designed to address cybercrime has begun to actually develop some momentum. When I consider that it took a year to just get a cybersecurity bill through committee, I think of Nero fiddling while Rome burns, especially when everyone on the committee appears to believe it’s critical legislation.
The CyberSecurity Act, … Read More…