Trojan that can turn off antivirus program

Attackers issued a new version of their Flashback.C malware for the Apple’s operating system, Mac OS X.

This Trojan horse tries to trick users that it is a patch for Adobes Flash Player and is capable of turning off the built in protection that Apple issues with Mac OS X, the XProtect. The F-Secure computer security company’s researchers said that this kind of behavior is nothing new in the malware world. It is logical that the attackers try to disable the most used protection systems, and the most common is the one already built in Mac OS X. The security threat for an average user is minimal, like from the Flashback virus family in general. The reason for that is that they require administrator privileges to install themselves and that user type in his administrator password. Flashback variants were orderly more and more sophisticated, and so from the last version Flashback.B they are capable of distinguishing whether or not the operating systems they are attacking was started on a virtual machine and prevent itself from installing on one, primarily because such machines are also used for malware research and acquiring data about them. More information can be found at SC Magazine web site.