Tag: trojanhorse

Intego has confirmed a report by Macworld UK about a new Mac OS X Trojan horse that can permanently delete all the files in a user’s Home folder. The Trojan horse (AS.MW2004.Trojan) was found in a fake version of Microsoft Office 2004 downloaded from the Gnutella peer-to-peer network.

Security experts and Mac programmers have slammed Intego for exaggerating the threat of what the company called the first Trojan Horse for Mac OS X. “They gave the impression that this is a threat, but it isn’t,” said Dave Schroeder, a systems engineer with the University of Wisconsin. “It is a benign proof of concept that was posted to a newsgroup. It isn’t in the wild, and can’t be spread in the wild.

Mac security specialist Intego has issued a security warning alerting users of the first Trojan horse to affect Mac OS X. According to the company, this Trojan horse, MP3Concept (MP3Virus.Gen), exploits a weakness in Mac OS X where applications can appear to be other types of files. It has the potential to delete all of a user’s personal files; send an e-mail message containing a copy of itself to other users; and infect other MP3, JPEG, GIF or QuickTime files. Read More