Wednesday, March 21, 2012

Latest Variant of Imuler OS X Trojan Uses Images to Infect Macs

AppleSecurity researchers over at Sophos recently spotted a new variant of the Imuler Trojan horse targeting Apple’s OS X in the wild.

OSX/Imuler-B is leveraging the hotness of 2011 Sports Illustrated Swimsuit model Irina Shayk and the fact that OS X doesn’t show file extensions by default in order to infect Macs.

So while a Shayk fan thinks they’re actually opening an image of the supermodel, they’re actually unleashing the Trojan upon their machine.

Imuler-B

Screenshot Credit: Sophos


Once Imuler-B is launched, it deletes the malicious application file and replaces it with an image of Shayk before quietly opening a backdoor and uploading sensitive information to a remote server.

It may be a good idea for Mac users to update their settings to show all filename extensions to avoid situations like these – and of course, to be careful about what you download and where you download it from.

While there aren’t as many malware threats for OS X as there are for Windows, there ARE threats out there. So make sure you don’t let your guard down too much.

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