Two new pieces of malware for theApple Mac OS Xoperating system have been detected in
the wild, according to security firm Sophos.
The first is the
OSX/Tored-Fam worm, which spreads via e-mail attachments. The
worm, which collects e-mail addresses and attempts to forward
itself, is being used to build a Mac botnet of hijacked computers,
security researchers suspect.
The second is a Trojan horse, called
OSX/Jahlav-C is found on what looks like a pornography site.
Users are lured into activating the Trojan by a message that says
they need to download an ActiveX component to view the site's
content.
The Trojan uses a Perl script to communicate with a remote
website and download code supplied by the attacker to take control
of the computer.
Anyone switching to Apple computers because they think they are
immune from attacks through websites is making a mistake, said
Graham Cluley, senior technology consultant at Sophos.
"We are seeing more attacks against Mac users all the time, with
hackers planting bear-traps that work out if you are visiting their
page on a Windows or Mac computer, and deliver the appropriate
malicious payload accordingly," he said in a
blog posting.
Sophos demonstrates one of the new pieces of Mac malware