Malware Articles on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog

DevilRobber now "improved", still nasty malware threat

by Kelly Guimont (Nov 18th, 2011)

We previously told you about DevilRobber and what sort of unsavory things it can do to (and with) your Mac. (In case you don't click over to read the article, here's the scoop: it's bad. Real bad.) Back in the day (November 1st), it was a Trojan horse and sent a little of your personal info ...

Estonian Hackers target iTunes users in 'Clickjacking' ring

by Kelly Hodgkins (Nov 10th, 2011)

Wired has an interesting report on a clickjacking scheme that hijacked prominent websites including iTunes and the IRS. The scheme was run by six Estonians and one Russian operating out of Eastern Europe. The team created several fake companies, including a bogus advertising agency, which were ...

Two new Mac malware concerns: Tsunami and DevilRobber

by Victor Agreda, Jr. (Nov 1st, 2011)

As reported yesterday by Computerworld, there are two malware threats for OS X to concern yourself with (temporarily). The first, Tsunami, isn't much of a threat yet. The other, DevilRobber, may be slowing your Mac down as we speak. Here's more info on each of them. Tsunami Basically a ...

Trojan variation disables Mac malware protection

by Chris Rawson (Oct 19th, 2011)

Researchers from F-Secure warn that a variant on a trojan discovered in September, which masquerades as an Adobe Flash Player installer, now exists and is capable of disabling OS X's built-in malware protection. OSX/Flashback.C disables the auto-updater component of XProtect, which means the ...

Daily Update for September 26, 2011

by Steven Sande (Sep 26th, 2011)

It's the TUAW Daily Update, your source for Apple news in a convenient audio format. You'll get all the top Apple stories of the day in three to five minutes, which is perfect for a quick review of what's happening in the Apple world. You can listen to today's Apple stories by clicking the ...

Apple updates malware definitions to address PDF trojan

by Chris Rawson (Sep 26th, 2011)

According to MacRumors, Apple has updated its malware definitions to address a PDF trojan that gained widespread attention last week. While reports indicated that the trojan's damage was limited to installing a backdoor in users' systems, Apple has moved relatively quickly to address the threat ...

Daily Update for August 24, 2011

by Steven Sande (Aug 24th, 2011)

It's the TUAW Daily Update, your source for Apple news in a convenient audio format. You'll get all the top stories of the day in three to five minutes, which is perfect for a quick review of what's happening in the Apple world. You can listen to today's Apple stories by clicking the inline ...

McAfee: Android malware soars while iPhone untouched

by Mike Schramm (Aug 23rd, 2011)

McAfee says that the Android OS is having some issues with malware lately -- according to a new study from the anti-malware company, Android malware has grown by 76% over the past few months, sending the number of troublesome scripts out there to over 40. Some of the malware appears to be ...

Apple updates malware definitions to address fake Flash player trojan

by Mike Schramm (Aug 12th, 2011)

Apple's updated an entry in the anti-malware files of OS X to lock down a trojan that pretends to be a Flash player installer, but actually hijacks users' search results. The trojan is known as "OSX.QHost.WB.A," and claims to install Flash, but instead redirects Google results to an IP in the ...

Russian raid suggests tie between MacDefender and ChronoPay

by Chris Rawson (Aug 5th, 2011)

When the MacDefender malware made the rounds a few months ago, it sparked a frenzy of pundits claiming OS X's free ride in the malware scene was over (and as our research shows, they were wrong. Again). At the same time, we all wondered who was behind MacDefender in the first place. After a ...

Mac malware 'explosion' missing in action

by Richard Gaywood (Jul 21st, 2011)

The appearance of the MacDefender trojan back in May provoked a lot of back-and-forth between various tech writers (including your humble correspondent). Was this a sign that the good times were ending? That the Mac platform would come under ever-fiercer attack from malware authors? That soon ...

Force your Mac to update malware definitions (Updated)

by Steven Sande (Jun 3rd, 2011)

You've updated your Mac with Security Update 2011-003, but how do you know if you have the latest malware definitions from Apple? Macworld had a nice technical note on how to force your Mac to update its malware definitions, so we thought we'd pass that knowledge along. To start, you can check ...

Avast! Free Antivirus for Mac beta now available

by Steven Sande (Jun 1st, 2011)

Apple released Security Update 2011-003 yesterday with protection from the MacDefender malware and its variants, but some of our readers might want to do more to protect their Macs from malware. Avast has been a longtime supplier of a free (for non-commercial use) antivirus package for Windows ...

Hours after security update, new MacDefender variant evades it

by Mike Schramm (Jun 1st, 2011)

And the cycle continues. Yes, just hours after Apple released a security update designed to smack down the recently-prevalent MacDefender malware, ZDnet's Ed Bott reports that a new variant of the bogus 'security' software has been released into the wild. This version is called "Mdinstall.pkg" ...

Responding to Security Update 2011-003 in verse

by Erica Sadun (May 31st, 2011)

What is it about viruses and security concerns that automatically lend themselves to verse? TUAW doesn't analyze these things. It merely moves with the flow. Here is our "Burma Shave" style overview of the Mac Defender/Apple Security Update crisis. When those Macs caught 'la grippe' Apple ...