Pirated iWork contains botnet trojan, breaks hearts

The tubes are ablaze today with news from CNN of the ~~first ever~~ latest malicious program to be found on the Mac. The trojan was first discovered in January but it did not receive wildfire-like popularity until recently when two experts at Symantec published a bulletin on the subject of the malware.

The trojan, named "iBotnet" (get it?), has only affected a few thousand Macs in the wild and it is currently not known to do any real harm. Should you be concerned? Well, the answer to that depends on whether you're a software pirate or not. The distribution method for this particular piece of malware is through the downloading of certain bootlegged copies of Apple's iWork.

Brian Krebs over at the Washington Post details some information about the actual first botnet specifically for the Mac. He points out that the current media storm is for a trojan that was actually discovered in January. He goes on to mention that the first botnet for the Mac was actually released in 2006 and targeted both Macs and PCs alike.

In other news, sales of Symantec's Norton AntiVirus shot up following the release of the security bulletin and subsequent frenzy of coverage. Actually, this is not true (at least to this humble blogger's knowledge); but it does pose an interesting question. Who profits most from the release of malware on any platform? One thing we know for sure, though, is that the end-user is definitely losing out in this game.

The moral of this story: stop all the downloading! Thanks G.I. Joe! In all seriousness, though, the majority of malware on the Mac (and on the PC) is distributed through nefarious chains of content acquisition. Be careful out there when clicking links and downloading files or programs from sites that you may not trust.

Thanks to everyone who sent this in!

View Tags

Source: http://www.cnn.com/2009/TECH/04/22/first.mac.botnet/index.ht…

Categories

Software

The tubes are ablaze today with news from CNN of the first ever latest malicious program to be found on the Mac. The trojan was first...

Add a Comment

Sign in »

32 Comments

Filter by:

ColonelSmith

OpenDNS protects your entire network from botnets for free... just sayin

April 24 2009 at 4:58 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

Ron

The most information I received about this issue is from friends who have received "bulletins" from PCTools and Symantec outlining the issue and soliciting people to purchase virus protection software for the Mac.

The questions I have are:

- Why did they not tell people the only way to get the virus was to download a specific infected piece of pirated software?
- In January, if people had this virus protection software installed, would it have protected the users? Or, is it only now that they are discovering or designing their software to check for this malware?
- Why are they soliciting people to buy their software when it is not clear that people have even downloaded the pirated software in the first place?

Sometimes I hate to think the people that benefit most from these viruses are the virus detection companies... but in this case, I think their fear mongering and warning people about this "malware in the wild" without pointing out the very limited audience they are referring to, they are doing a misservice to the community.

April 23 2009 at 6:29 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

Randy

Like the article states, the lesson learned here from all those "heart-broken" Macheads, is don't trust pirated software. Save your nickels and buy your own license. I have the greatest Apple experience when I buy my music through iTunes, and software through the Apple Store. I don't try and cheat the system but rather embrace it, and I have never had a single bad Apple experience as a result of that mindset.

April 23 2009 at 5:03 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

michas_pi

HELP COMPUTER

April 23 2009 at 4:42 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

jayweiss

MORONWARE !!!

This is a case of getting what you deserve. If you pirate software which is this cheap you deserve to get a trojan/bot for your trouble.

Although the price of Adobe software is WAY TOO HIGH,The same goes for those people who pirated Adobe CS4 and got the same thing for their troubles.

April 23 2009 at 3:07 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

jbelkin

Here's the main difference between Macs & PC in getting infected with malware:

Mac:
Turn on Mac. Launch browser. Navigate to warez site. Download pirate iWork. Launch installer. Click YES when asked if you want to install app you downloaded from internet. Type in password to install. Launch pirate app.

PC:
Turn on computer. Wait 15 minutes.
Turn on machine

April 23 2009 at 2:57 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

glad

Actually there was a iServices trojan removal tool which will get rid of the pesky little blighter.

April 23 2009 at 2:16 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

Darrell

Anybody got a clean link?

April 23 2009 at 2:02 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

I don't mean to be rude, but do the people that write for this blog have a memory of a Goldfish?
http://www.tuaw.com/2009/01/22/bittorrent-copies-of-iwork-09-may-contain-nasty-trojan/

April 23 2009 at 1:50 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

1 reply to Ed's comment

Victor Agreda, Jr.

It hit the front of CNN yesterday, which is why we're bringing it back up. Thanks for being there to criticize without reading the 1st paragraph.

April 23 2009 at 7:57 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

Sabi

its funny cause those who download it from torrent are idiots because iwork trial is free from apple's webpage, then just download the serial number and your fine...
Windoze users coming to Apple..what would you expect?

April 23 2009 at 1:28 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply