Apple fights back Flashback malware
Last month, the publisher of Russian antivirus Doctor Web issued a report that a new malware identified as the Flashback had infected between 550,000 and 600,000 Mac. The victim’s computer is infected after visiting a malicious site that contain JavaScript loading itself a Java applet. A few weeks earlier Oracle had released a patch for its virtual machine, but Apple did not want to distribute it.
At April 13, following the discovery of this botnet, Apple released a patch for Mac OS X Snow Leopard (10.6) and Leo (10.7). This disables the default Java applets and in case of reactivation, blocks them automatically if no applet is loaded for a long time.
A new update is now available for Mac OS X Leopard (10.5). This tool identifies the best known variants of Flashback and cleans infected machines. Apple also released a tool to automatically disable the versions of Flash Player does not have the latest security updates.
Apple continues its fight against malware Flashback and publishes a patch for users of Mac OS X 10.5.