Antivirus company Kaspersky has reported the discovery of another backdoor trojan for Mac OS X, providing further evidence the days of flying under the radar are over for Mac users. Kaspersky has labelled the trojan backdoor.OSX.Olyx.a, which offers the attacker remote access to a victim’s machine.
The malware allows the attacker to use infected computers to “download other malware, launch programs and send commands to an interpreter for execution”, the company writes in its June malware report.
Signatures for trojan were added to other Mac antivirus databases, such as Sophos', in June.
“It's similar to the many Windows-based backdoor Trojan horses that we see, giving hackers remote access to your computer,” Graham Cluley, Sophos‘ senior technology consultant told CSO.com.au.
“We can expect to see Mac malware continuing to echo the tricks that Windows malware has used as the cybercriminals explore making money from unprotected Apple users.”
Sophos in February discovered a separate backdoor trojan also designed to give the attacker remote controls to a victim’s device.
Kaspersky noted that Mac trojan it found in June followed a spate of rogue antivirus attacks targeting Mac OS X systems in May.
Scareware for both Mac and Windows systems has already caught the eye of US law enforcement, which announced the seizure of 48 servers across the US and Europe that supported a single operation alleged to have netted US$72 million over the past three years.
The "MacDefender" scareware tactics observed in May mimicked previous attacks on Windows users, where a false virus alarm is issued when a user visits a rigged web page. In that instance, it was "SEO poisoned" Google image searches, according to Sophos.