MacControl Trojan Being Used In Targeted Attacks Against OS X Users

Trailrunner7 writes "Welcome to the age of targeted attacks, Mac users. Perhaps having grown tired of owning Windows machines around the world for the last few years, attackers have now taken up the challenge of going after Macs with the same kind of targeted attack tactics that have served them so well in the Windows world. Researchers have found a new attack that employs two separate pieces of malware, a malicious Word document and some techniques for maintaining persistence on compromised machines, and the campaign is specifically targeted at Mac users. The command-and-control domain involved in the attack is located in China and the attack exploits a three-year-old vulnerability in the way that Office for Mac handles certain Word files, according to researchers at AlienVault, who discovered and analyzed the attacks."

Comments

Microsoft (:

[Anonymous Coward]

Now how cool is that. A new threat is found for the Mac platform and it's in a Microsoft product of course.
It's an improvement on the previous round, though. Last time it was about malware that required you to actually install it :D

Re:Microsoft (:

[recoiledsnake]

Now how cool is that. A new threat is found for the Mac platform and it's in a Microsoft product of course.
It's an improvement on the previous round, though. Last time it was about malware that required you to actually install it :D

However, it's an interesting counter-point to the commenters who regularly comment(and get modded up to 11) "How about MS fix security in Windows instead of taking down botnets/shipping antivirus etc.). There is no way to secure an OS from application exploits short of iOS style lockdown, which these very commenters would slag as "TAKING AWAY MY FREEEDOMZZZ". Sorry, but blaming Windows holes has become passe, especially after malware for OS X and Android(run on a Linux kernel which we are told is secure compared to Windows) has come out.

10,000 hipsters abandon the Mac

[hessian]

It's gone mainstream. Now that it has viruses, it's like the Miley Cyrus of computing.

Time to find something more obscure. OpenVMS on an Atom system with a retro GEOS interface. That's the ticket.

I used to like Apple before it was mainstream, but now I've moved on. Just like with White Ring and fixies.

patched three years ago

[MushMouth]

Actually this is what you get when you shut/put off updates.

Re:LoL

[sg_oneill]

I spend my days working as a mac tech, so no, I really do not. I am, however, still highly amused that it happens this way. In much the same fashion as I am amused when wine is used to exploit a linux box.

You may laugh, but its truer than you think. Many many moons ago I was admining a small network of linux desktops for students at the local university. Management , non technnical of course, demanded that internet explorer be installed on them. After protesting loudly and losing the argument, I ended up deploying ie6 across the network via wine. It took aproximately 3 days before they became infested.

In a strange way, I took that as a surprising confirmation of wine's compatibility.

In the end I replaced the Mozilla browsers icons with E icons and the office twonks where happy. God I hate tech support