The Flashback Trojan is Turning Macs into Zombies

It’s here – the largest EVER Mac trojan has arrived. It’s called Flashback, it’s huge, and if you are running Mac OS X 10.6 you may be affected.

600,000 Macs around the world have been compromised. Statistically, that is a giant botnet.

A botnet: think of it like your computer has been turned into a zombie, and is under someone else’s control. Gather together enough zombies, now you have a botnet army. Most scary of all: you likely wouldn’t even realize you’ve been affected.

What you need to do:

FIRST – check to see if you are vulnerable. If you are running Mac OS X 10.6 you might be. If you are running Mac OS X 10.7 you are likely okay.

SECOND – Let’s check to see if your machine is infected. We’re going to use Terminal to do that, your Mac’s command-line interface.

Open ‘Terminal’.

Don’t be scared if you’ve never used Terminal. You’re going to feel a bit like a hacker, fun!

But – don’t screw around in here, stay focused; a couple wrong keystrokes and you’ll change and alter things you do not want to.

Now you’re looking at a window like this:

Copy and paste this line into Terminal, then hit ‘enter’:

defaults read /Applications/Safari.app/Contents/Info LSEnvironment

 

NOT AFFECTED: if it returns this line:

The domain/default pair of (/Applications/Safari.app/Contents/Info, LSEnvironment) does not exist

That’s what you want, “does not exist”

AFFECTED: if it returns anything but. If infected, click here for the remedy. F-Secure is an antivirus and computer security company in Finland. You’re going to download a Java update from Apple here.

Remember the golden rule to avoid problems:

The Golden Rule: If you installed it, update it.

 

We Mac users have enjoyed relatively virus and malware-free living, till now. I blogged about it last year over on KeriBlog, click here for why it’s no longer the case.

Further Reading:

– Gizmodo

– The Register

– The Internet Storm Center

 

UPDATE – April 13 2012

Yesterday, Apple released a fix for the Flashback trojan.

To install it: go up to the apple top left corner, choose “Software Update”, and say yes to installing the Java update that looks like this:

Apple’s official release page is here. I’ve copied some of the text below and bolded the important parts.

This Java security update removes the most common variants of the Flashback malware.

This update also configures the Java web plug-in to disable the automatic execution of Java applets. Users may re-enable automatic execution of Java applets using the Java Preferences application. If the Java web plug-in detects that no applets have been run for an extended period of time it will again disable Java applets.

I suggested the other day it was good security practice to ensure your computer is NOT set up to “automatically open downloaded files”. Good idea to do that now. Snow Leopard users might have to do this manually.

Remember, nothing is ever 100% with this stuff. Always err on the side of caution.

 

 

I’ve Been a Geek a Long Time

Specifically since 1985 when I got my first Mac – the Apple Macintosh.

It had 128k of RAM, the computer you’re reading this on probably has 2-4GBs of RAM.  People built drafting programs, flight simulators, graphic programs with such little memory, think about that.

My favourite Mac of all time was the LC 575, that’s my only photo of it, yes those are lipstick kisses, and that’s its system software install disc.

A close second would be my Powerbook 170.

My worst computer by far was my Umax.  Remember that brief time when Apple allowed other companies to make the hardware and clones for their OS?  I despised mine, spent more time fixing it than I did using it.

Then when the iMac came out, and Apple gave out watches to test one at at their store. I wore that watch out.

SCSI!

Remember when crazy computer language started infiltrating our everyday conversations… BubbleJet, DotMatrix, Midi, WYSIWYG….

I kept that connector, might turn it into a piece of jewellery.

 

Dark Castle, 1986.

The world’s biggest floppy.

I originally had four, which I framed and displayed like art, then over the years I gave away three.

I have no idea what’s on the discs, they’re from a military base in the 90s. I should just say it holds a copy of the world’s first computer virus haha.

 

 

Spent the Weekend Rebuilding Things

Regularily, my stuff gets so melted, I have to wipe and start fresh.

That’s what I did this weekend.

(that should say ’10 oops)

That was a good one, that crash. See my hard-drive in intensive care under the arrow, separated from its casing bottom left?

Above:

– that’s what your laptop hard drive looks like

– that’s an anti-static bag, to protect the drive from electric discharges

– top right photo sums up my luck – that’s 15 minutes into having booted the new machine for the first time.  Looks like the ribbon needs tightening, shows up on the camera too.

That’s better than this alternative though.

Did the same thing to my phone, too.

When was the last time you cleaned yours? Organized your files, delete or update applications, you’d be shocked at how it feels after, how it reacts (like new).

Bottom right – see that?  Allow Facebook to go in and take copies of my Contact list, and then let them send stuff back?  Give Facebook editing power over my Calendar :|.  I hope you don’t do this.

Here’s the old desktop, for those of you who switched to Lion and miss it.

I uploaded it at best quality, click on through.

Some of my tools.

I have a burn in my shoulder from mousing so much, and I got into the zone a couple times during this where I was typing like 75 wpm with 95% accuracy BOOM.

Then I went for ice cream.

 

I’ve Had a Cel for 13 Years

Bought a new one last week, another Blackberry Bold 9870.

Here’s my history since the beginning.

I miss the flip action. That StarTAC flipped close AMAZING, and you bet I wore that belt clip like a boss.

(there’s one missing above, between the two flips on the left, a Motorola V60 )

Maybe I’ll make a video, “My Electronics History”… because look, I have endless amounts of this stuff:

That’s a Sharp IQ-7200 from 1989, and my very first organizer.  See that?  64kb.

I should put some batteries in, see what kind of dossiers little-me had going on back then.

I’ve had a Mac for 25+ years.

In the mid 90s I was “that Mac girl”, making iron-on t-shirts that read, “You can take my Mac, when you peel my cold dead hands off the mouse”… if I ever find a photo, I’ll blog it.