Mac Flashback Trojan Blamed On Infected WordPress Blogs

Antivirus firm Kaspersky Labs has announced what they believe to be the source of the Apple Mac Flaskback Trojan. Their research shows that ti was likely due to a large group of WordPress blog sites, based here in the U.S., which were hijacked.

Once hijacked, visitors were sent to a series of malware hosts.

Malware was widely distributed from September 2011 and February 2012. Social engineering attacks were used to prompt users into downloading fake Adobe Flash Player plugins.

The only reason that the number of attacks on MAC diminished in February was due to the malware being re-distributed to other websites where Java could be easily compromised.

The reason Mac users were hit the hardest was due to the fact that a large majority of the websites which were affected were based in the U.S, and Apple Mac is North American-based. The number of infected WordPress sites ranges from as low as 30,000 to as high as 100,000.

According to statistics released by Kaspersky, there were over 205,000 Mac users who checked their systems for infections. Out of this group, less than 2 percent reported being infected with the malware.

By utilizing some forms of malware that were re-purposed from the PC industry, criminals are now able to access OS X systems.