If you normally feels superior about malware because you use a Mac, not so fast

If you use a Mac as I do, about half of the time, it’s easy to be lulled into the belief that computer viruses and malware is only something those poor misguided people who use Windows have to deal with.

Probably just as well a wake-up call clangs every so often.  Last week it did in the form of a new Trojan and a new “backdoor tool” aimed at Mac users.

Here’s what ZDnet News says about the Trojan:

The Trojan — called ‘OSX.RSPlug.D’ by Intego, the Mac security specialist that discovered the threat — is a variant on an older piece of malicious code but with a new installer, Intego said.

“It is a downloader, and it contacts a remote server to download the files it installs,” Intego said in an advisory. “This means that, in the future, the downloader may be able to install payloads [other] than the one it currently installs.”

In other respects the Trojan is similar to previous versions of RSPlug, which first surfaced in October 2007, Intego said. It installs a piece of malicious code known as DNSChanger, which routes the user’s internet traffic through a malicious DNS server, leading users to phishing websites or pages displaying advertisements.

The Trojan is found on porn websites posing as a codec needed to play video files, a technique used to trick the user into downloading and installing it.

While the threat from this Trojan is not great (and besides you probably need to be digging around low budget porn sites to have the chance to be contaminated – naughty, naughty).  It’s good for users to remember that as the Mac platform gets more popular, it will eventually catch the eye of the real virus authors and then chaos.

Image by ibuzzo via Flickr

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