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Over 40 hares killed by aircraft at Dublin Airport
Meteor shower and rare 'double planet' to light up Irish skies tonight - here's how to spot them
Forecaster who quit role on-air now working on two books - including one with 'personal' focus
Apple CEO Tim Cook unveils the latest version of Mac OS X, 'Lion', last October. The OS has been exploited by a little-known vulnerability. Paul Sakuma/AP
Virus
Mac users urged to download software update after virus scare
Around 550,000 machines worldwide are thought to have fallen victim to the ‘Flashback’ trojan, an unusual scare for Mac users.
USERS OF THE OS X operating system for Apple Mac computers have been advised to download the latest software updates for their machines in order to safeguard themselves from a newly-discovered virus.
The ‘Flashback’ trojan, identified by a Russian anti-virus software manufacturer, is thought to have infected around 550,000 machines running the operating system around the world.
The security scare is unusual for Mac users, who are rarely targeted by malicious viruses as their authors ordinarily target the more popular Microsoft Windows.
An analysis carried out by the anti-virus company, Dr Web, suggested that Irish Mac users accounted for 0.1 per cent of the estimated number of victims.
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The trojan virus – a type of software which claims one purpose but in reality carries out another, more malicious one – is thought to have originated on a number of Russian streaming and gaming websites, and been distributed from there.
“According to some sources, links to more than four million compromised web-pages could be found on a Google SERP [search engine results page] at the end of March,” Dr Web said in a release.
The compromised pages automatically redirect users to another page which includes a Java applet, which in turn triggers the security exploit.
Apple has since released an update to the Java for OS X program which aims to close the vulnerabilities exploited by the trojan. The update can be downloaded automatically from the Software Update area within OS X.
Virus specialist website F-Secure has instructions for Mac users on how to diagnose whether their machines have been exploited, and how to remove the virus if a machine has been hit.
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Virus’ for macs will only become more prevalent in the few years in my opinion! If I wrote a virus to steal credit card or bank details, I’d write it for the sections of computer owners that can afford €1000+ machines rather than the windows laptop that cost €300.
From the amount of red thumbs we seem to be getting it appears not everyone is in agreement. Do you think the red thumbs may be symbolic of the ipads issue with overheating?
according to your public Facebook post, you believe that 1 + 1 + 1 + 1 + 1 + 1 + 1 + 1 + 1 + 1 – 1 + 1 + 1 + 1 + 1 + 1 + 1 x 0 is equal 0, which makes me believe you have tendency for mistakes ;)
I’ve had my i-mac nearly 6 months now and as they say ‘Once you go Mac you never go back’. It’s an amazing machine and fantastic for design work and programming. Luckily i haven’t caught that virus, but i do keep my software up to date. The virus seems only to be effecting Mac’s old operating system.
And for the low blow “Windows 8″ is being designed on i-mac’s.
Software security people have been saying for years that Macs are only slightly safer than PC-based architecture. The reasons macs were considered safer was because of the relatively small user base. Virus/trojan makers were more interested in hitting as many machines as possible and designed their threats around PCs. This is changing now and I would expect to see these attacks become more prevalent in the near future. Oh and before I get 100+ thumbs down from Mac users I am only stating a very relevant point backed up by the likes of Kaspersky and McAfee for years.
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