Flashback trojan has infected 600,000 Macs worldwide

Apple are facing a problem in the shape of the ‘Flashback' trojan horse virus which is said to have infected around 600,000 Macintosh computers, with more than half in the States alone.

Russian antivirus software company Dr. Web have issued a report this week which states that the computers running OS X are infected by the BackDoor.Flashback virus. Arstechnica also reported on the problem yesterday.

The report highlights that 274 bots are originating from Cupertino, Calif – the hometown of Apple.

Dr.Web released a map detailing the percentage of infections worldwide. Canada is in second place with 19.8 percent and the United Kingdom holds 12.8 percent of the problem cases.

Apple have released a Java Security update on Tuesday to resolve the vulnerabilities that the virus uses to exploit OSX, however there are many hundreds of thousands of users simply unaware that they are infected. Oracle issued a fix for this Javascript problem in February.

F-Secure have given instructions on how to analyse and remove the threat from your computer, so it is definitely worth looking into. Check it out here.

Kitguru says: Macintosh computers have grown in popularity, which means the malicious coders find them a more viable target now.

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