“The worm exploiting a critical Windows bug that Microsoft patched with an emergency fix in late October is being used to build a new botnet, a security researcher said on Monday,” Gregg Keizer reports for Computerworld.
“Ivan Macalintal, a senior research engineer with Trend Micro Inc., said that the worm, which his company has dubbed ‘Downad.a’ — it’s called ‘Conficker.a’ by Microsoft and ‘Downadup’ by Symantec Corp. — is a key component in a new botnet that criminals are creating,” Keizer reports. “‘We think 500,000 is a ball park figure,’ said Macalintal when asked the size of the new botnet. ‘That’s not as large as some, such as [the] Kraken [botnet], or Storm earlier, but it’s still starting to grow.'”
MacDailyNews Take: Macalintal. Mac All Intel. Weird.
Keizer continues, “Last week, Microsoft warned that the worm was behind a spike in exploits of a bug in the Windows Server service, which is used by the operating system to connect to network file and print servers.”
“The new worm is a global threat, said Macalintal. ‘This has real potential to do damage,’ he said. Trend Micro has spotted infected IP addresses on the networks of Internet service providers (ISPs) in the U.S., China, India, the Middle East, Europe and Latin America,” Keizer reports.
Full article here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “MacSmiley” for the heads up.]
Once again, in anticipation of the appearance of the old canard that the Mac is secure via obscurity: that’s an illogical myth. Why, if obscurity means security, in April 2007 was there a virus for iPods running Linux (a few thousand devices total, to wildly overestimate, in all the world), but there are no viruses for the over 30 million Mac OS X computers that are currently online? Why would criminals not target the most affluent personal computer users, the tens of millions of Mac users around the world?
Uh, oh – logic is certainly not what AV software peddlers, Windows PC box assemblers, and the rest of the leeches affixed to the Windows ecosystem want people to hear. Fear is what they’re after. The sheep must be kept in the Windows pen, no matter the cost to reputations, reality, productivity, sanity, etc. Far too many have far too much invested in Microsoft Windows for them to stand idly by and let it all slip away due to a vastly superior, vastly more secure solution from Apple. But slip away it does nonetheless.
The idea that Windows’ morass of security woes exists because more people use Windows and that Macs have no security problems because fewer people use Macs, is simply not true. By design, Mac OS X is simply more secure than Windows. Period. For reference and reasons why Mac OS X is more secure than Windows, read The New York Times’ David Pogue’s mea culpa on the subject of the “Mac Security Via Obscurity” myth here.
“Security via Obscurity” is a defense mechanism for the delusional and also tool for Microsoft apologists and/or those who profit from Windows; to be used when attempting keep the sheep in the pen. 30 million Mac OS X installs is not “obscure” at all, but over seven (7+) years of Mac users surfing the Net unimpeded certainly is “secure.” Besides social engineering scams (phishing, trojans; no OS can instill common sense) the only thing by which Mac users are really affected are large swaths of compromised Windows machines slowing down the ‘Net with spam and nefarious botnet traffic targeted at exploiting even more insecure Windows boxes. Get a Mac.
Hard to believe that people and corporations tolerate this worm, virus, and spyware crap so they can use Microsoft Windows. Why? Maybe it is an illness?
Yes. A mental one.
MDN calls it “The Stockholm Syndrome” (when a hostage victim sympathises with their hostage taker).
I look forward to the day there are viruses/worms/botnets effecting OS X. If Mac OS X were on 90% of the worlds machines, I’m sure there will be a few dangerous viruses/worms/botnets going around still.
No software is 100% secure. Just because OS X is more secure than Windows, doesn’t mean it is impenetrable.
@JAYGEE:
Aha!
The ol’ “good” idea of security through obscurity mith!
You are soooo informed.
“Why? Maybe it is an illness?”
No, thousands of IT jobs depend on it.
But MS says Vista is the most secure version of Windows ever and everyone is buying it so just wait and these botnets will dry up and disappear so we won’t need a virus checker ever again.
Our company is so confident in the security of Vista we had all the virus checkers removed and boy did our new PCs fly… until twenty minutes later when they mysteriously went slow again and the network traffic spiked all day. I blame the networks.
(Fingers crossed behind back)
JAYGEE,
I suggest that you learn the difference between “effecting” and “affecting” before using either to convey your next illogical fantasy.
JAYGEE,
aside from the points already made above, yes it is possible to crack one Mac with a trojan. But that’s as far as the malware will get — unless someone else on another Mac is dimwitted enough to bite at the “social engineering” bait.
Jaygee, google UNIX and bone up on it. Once informed, go ahead and post.
It doesn’t matter how secure software is. There will always be holes in software.
Windows is a serious global threat and the media needs to acknowledge that. I guarantee that the nightly news will report this as a “computer virus” and say “computer users” are at risk. NO NO NO. It’s a Windows virus and Windows users are at risk. Computers don’t get viruses; Windows does.
JayGee-PeeCee: It doesn’t matter how secure software is.
ok……………..?
Read Growl above. Pretty much sums it up.
@ JAYGEE
> I look forward to the day there are viruses/worms/botnets effecting OS X…
Until there is real world evidence for such a threat, such statements are meaningless. And why do you “look forward” to it? Envy, I guess.
> No software is 100% secure…
I agree. Mac OS X is not “impenetrable” to user stupidity, if they fall for a trojan and knowingly run a program and give authorization (user name and password) to install some malware.
But that’s a case-by-case, person-by-person, security issue. A “virus” requires no direct user action (and stupidity) to self-propagate from system to system. That’s why there are no Mac spambots. Because it’s not worth the effort when the long-hanging fruit is Windows, not Apple. It has nothing to do with market share. Even if Mac OS X market share was 50%, criminals would still go after the softer target.
Using a Mac on the internet is like parking your car in a lot full of unlocked vehicles. The bad guys might be able to work out a way in, but why would they bother.
I love PC users.
Blind freddy knows that Unix is fundamentally far more secure than the hopeless spaghetti code miasma that is microsh*t windows. One was designed and written properly with security embedded from the ground up, not a tottering edifice of bad code driven by expedience, profit and greed with piss weak security added on top as an afterthought (becase it was too difficult?).
Lets face it, at it currently stands microsh*t would do better to start again with security as a design consideration from the get go, rather than trying to shoe horn it into the mess that is windows. Perhaps they should support a legacy version of windows for five/ten years of so (like they could have with xp) as they moved people over onto a completely new windows platform. Vista could have been a right turn for microsh*t into the realm of computing paradigms of now, rather than those of the 80’s where they still seem to be mired like a dying dinosaur thrashing about in the mud of a brave new world.
Microsh*t missed the opportunity. Big time. They couldn’t bite the bullet…Apple did with os 9 to osX…and look at the result. They built on a great platform, which seems just to be getting better with each iteration. Windows on the other hand seems to be getting worse. Sooner or later hey have to let the past go. The world has changed. Microsh*t hasn’t. Time to die….
Agree with Brulek.
Rather than admitting there are contemporary solutions to their problems, PC users prefer to ride the Dinosaur!
Hey, MDN Let’s get a picture of Ballmer saddled up on a big lumbering Brontosaurus waving a cowboy hat!
Ride that baby into the ground! Whoohoo!
Microsoft should just write a Windows 7 GUI that runs on the Darwin kernel.
@ PXT
> Using a Mac on the internet is like parking your car in a lot full of unlocked vehicles. The bad guys might be able to work out a way in, but why would they bother.
That’s the best analogy I’ve heard.
Macs have another advantage is that it tell users in understandable language that something is being download so they can stop the stop the problems, or have an idea when the problem started.
One big problem for Windows is that kids learn programing on windows. By the time people learn to code for Macs they have gotten laid, a job, and a life. They no longer have something to prove to the world. Its not that people asshole hackers don’t want Macs to have worms and viruses, they just don’t know how to write them.
This may change. With iPhone SDK being free to download and easy to work with educators will start using it as programing 101. Then they will discover that they do not need to buy software to code on a Mac unlike Windows. The next generation of kids could learn how to program on a Mac. This will make Macs more popular, but more open to assholes.
I need to wake up.
Macs have another advantage is that it tell users in understandable language that something is being download so they can stop the problems, or have an idea when the problem started.
One big problem for Windows is that kids learn programing on windows. By the time people learn to code for Macs they have gotten laid, a job, and a life. They no longer have something to prove to the world. Its not that asshole hackers don’t want Macs to have worms and viruses, they just don’t know how to write them.
This may change. With iPhone SDK being free to download and easy to work with educators will start using it as programing 101. Then they will discover that they do not need to buy software to code on a Mac unlike Windows. The next generation of kids could learn how to program on a Mac. This will make Macs more popular, but more open to assholes.