Article by George Norman

On 28 Nov 2008

Sophos, company that specializes in providing security software solutions, has recently discovered a new malware threat that targets Apple’s Mac operating system. Mac OS X users should not confuse this recent threat with the Trojan malware we covered last week, nor with the trendy Mac malware from late October. Apple made history by publicly announcing that Mac OS X users should install security software on their machines; Apple even provided some suggestions.

Sophos has detected this Mac OS X threat earlier this week, identified it as a Trojan and named it “OSX/Jahlav-A”. All Sophos security software products have been updated to detect this threat and prevent the user from getting infected.


Vanja Svajcer from Sophos Labs explains: “The Trojan comes as a key generator application MacAccess in a standard DMG disk image file, usually downloaded from a malicious website very similar to the websites hosting variants of OSX/RSPlug Trojans. The difference is that this time the malware does not simply redirect the DNS settings to a rogue DNS server but connects to an IP address located in Netherlands to download additional piece of code and execute it.”

In layman’s terms, the malware spreaders will set up a web page and claim that visitors to said page can watch a certain video (cough, porn). When the visitors click the play button, they will be informed that a codec download is necessary for the video to run. If you accept the download, you will get infected.

So what does Apple thing about all the recent malware threats that target the Mac OS X? Even though the marketing team has worked hard not to address the problem in the “Get a Mac” ads, Apple did come out (for the first time ever) and said that infection threat is a real danger and users should install a security solution so as to make a potential attacker’s job that much harder. Even though it looks like an ad, here are Apple’s recommendations: Intego VirusBarrier X5, Symantec Norton Anti-Virus 11, and McAfee VirusScan.



Tags: Apple, Mac OS X, Trojan, Malware

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