Researchers say Mac worm Tored fizzled
Thursday, May 7, 2009
Web security researchers in recent days picked apart a piece of malware for Mac OSX called Tored-A.
The Tored code attempts to steal email addresses and spread itself as a worm in hope of becoming the world's "first" Mac OSX botnet, as it says in the code written by the author.
The author even included a message trying to get users to spread the worm: "For Mac OS X ! :(If you are not on Mac please transfer this mail to a Mac and sorry for our fault :)"
But security researchers said the code has bugs that will keep it from becoming much of a threat.
Researchers said trojan horses have been planted on websites or P2P networks, designed to resemble programs for watching videos. A download that appears to be a pirated version of iWork has also been spotted in the wild.
In January, a trojan was circulating on pirated versions of iWork '09 and the Mac version of Adobe Photoshop CS4. Researchers said that some 5,000 machines were infected by the iWork Trojan - making it the first known Mac botnet.
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