So, there’s an epidemic of hacked Macs? Not even…
By now you’ve likely heard the news that Russian hacker collectives are paying a 43-cent bounty for each comprised Mac. Scary, huh? Well, actual incidences of this behavior observed in the wild are quite rare with the scammers paying more for hacked PCs.
Fortune reports that the six-page security paper delivered by Sophos researcher Dmitry Samosseiko, which is the source of this burgeoning brouhaha, includes just a single paragraph about the Mac:
Mac users are not immune to the scareware threat. In fact, there are ‘codec-partnerka’ dedicated to the sale and promotion of fake Mac software. One of the recent examples is Mac-codec.com. At the time of writing this article, the site is no longer available, but just a few months ago it was offering $0.43 for each install and offered various promo materials in the form of MacOS ‘video players.’
See also:
— Snow Leopard has integrated anti-trojan horse feature
— Gullible tempted with ‘free’ Snow Leopard, get trojan instead
— How to remove OSX.Trojan.iServices.A, iServices.B
— http://mac.blorge.com/2009/06/12/porntube-pushing-a-video-update-thats-really-a-trojan/
The question here that’s just begging to be asked how big this problem really is. The answer comes via The Register, which interviewed Samosseiko on the subject:
It’s very infrequent. We discover new ones extremely rarely compared to Windows platforms. I suspect that it wasn’t as profitable to target the Mac platform at that point. [It] probably closed because it wasn’t commercially viable for them to conduct business.
That said, the Samosseiko adds that the 43-cent bounty paid for each compromised Mac is lower than the 50 to 55 cents hackers typically pay for Windows machines, indicating that Macs aren’t as valuable to spammers and scareware merchants.
Lastly, the Sophos security researcher added, whereas there as a (single, non-plural) website operating in January and February that was offering bounties for compromised Macs, that site shutdown and hasn’t been heard from since.
So, there you have it — another tempest in a tea cup.
Nevertheless, as always, the take away is not to download warez, avoid dodgy porn sites (i.e. 99 percent of all porn sites), be nice to small animals and get some (free) antivirus software, run it and keep it fresh…
What’s your take?
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