ID: IRCNE2012041477
Date: 2012-04-22
According to "techworld", the source of the Apple Mac Flashback Trojan was probably a large clutch of compromised US-based WordPress blog websites hijacked to push visitors to malware hosts, Kaspersky Lab research has revealed.
As has previously been established by various sources, between September 2011 and February of this year, the malware was distributed using social engineering attacks that asked users to download a bogus Adobe Flash Player plugin.
By late February this strategy changed thanks to a new partner program which distributed the malware as a drive-by attack hitting three common Java vulnerabilities via compromised websites.
The change in tack paid off handsomely, infecting 744,000 OS X users according to Kaspersky numbers culled from individual IP addresses connecting to its Flashback (or ‘Flashflake’) sinkhole.
Kaspersky reports that 205,622 Mac users have checked for infection on the flashbackcheck.com website it set up, with 3,624 of these turning out to be infected, a malware rate under 2 percent. The overall infection numbers have declined rapidly since last week.
Mac users were an attractive target and its user base should expect more attacks during 2012 despite the appearance of Apple’s GateKeeper security in Mountain Lion.
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