AfterDawn: Tech news

Apple working to shut down Mac-based botnet, creating Flashback removal tool

Written by Andre Yoskowitz @ 11 Apr 2012 6:27

Apple working to shut down Mac-based botnet, creating Flashback removal tool

Last week we reported that over 500,000 Mac computers were infected with the BackDoor.Flashback trojan, which had turned the computers into a major botnet.
Apple has already patched the Java vulnerability that led to the exploit and is now working on a "Flashback removal tool" to help those already infected.

Additionally, the company says it is working with ISPs across the globe to disable any existing command and control centers, networks that tell the zombie computers what to do to victims.

Doctor Web, the Russian anti-virus company, first brought the trojan to the public's attention with a report.

The vendor said that the systems are infected with BackDoor.Flashback.39 "after a user is redirected to a bogus site from a compromised resource or via a traffic distribution system." JavaScript code will then be run with the exploit. Doctor Web said at the time that there can be thousands of compromised web-pages.

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