The recent Flashback trojan attack on Mac OS X is said to have infected some 6,00,000 Macs around the world and it’s not good news for Apple. Apple’s products have been considered to be extremely secure and that image seems to have been tarnished ever since the recent trojan attack. To make matters worse, Eugene Kaspersky, founder and CEO, Kaspersky Lab told CBRin an interview that Apple was 10 years behind Microsoft when it came to security. He said that the Flashback trojan attack was first of many attacks that could follow directed at the now popular operating system.
Apple needs to up their security
Kaspersky went on to say that there was no difference between Mac and Windows and that it was always possible to make malware for Macs. Flashback he said was able to get through because it asked the user to install itself, without any of the existing alert systems blocking the request. Apple’s Macs have recently gained a lot of popularity, malware writers have noticed this and decided to make malware targeted at it. Apple’s Mac sales grew some 7 percent in comparison to the last quarter for example. Kaspersky said that malware writers would still target Windows as it’s by far the most used platform.
Apple’s troubles only start here as Kaspersky thinks they’ll soon have to start releasing updates more frequently as more malware writers see the success of the Flashback trojan. Apple has come under attack by Kaspersky in the past for their delayed bug and security fixes. Apple is criticised for taking as long as three months to release bug fixes. This allowed the Flashback trojan to take advantage of the Java bug and spread across the web. He said that Microsoft faced similar issues some 10 years back and they’ve drastically changed their update and fix generation schedules. Apple, he said, would have to realize that and make similar changes to their development process. If they don’t, users are likely to be affected in the same way they were, with the Flashback trojan.
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