New Mac OS X Malware Found

Two new pieces of malware aimed at the Mac OS X surfaced last week, although only one of them presents any real danger.

The myth that the Mac computer isn’t subject to malware is slowly being broken down, and the emergence of two new pieces of malware last week is simply pointing more and more to the fact that we’re all vulnerable.

Mac security company Intego discovered the ‘OSX.RSPlug.D’ Tojan, which offers a variant on the old RSPlug Trojan that emerged in October last year, but with a new installer.

The Trojan is often found on porn sites, where it claims to be a codec needed to download files. Instead it installs a DNS Changer, after which the user’s Internet traffic is redirected through a malicious DNS server that presents phishing pages or ads, according to ZDNet.

In its advisory, Intego warned:

"It is a downloader, and it contacts a remote server to download the files it installs. This means that, in the future, the downloader may be able to install payloads [other] than the one it currently installs."

But it’s not the only Mac malware to rear its ugly head. Intego has also seen OSX.TrojanKit.Malez (known as OSX.Lamzev.A to others), a hacker tool that lets attackers to install backdoors in a user’s system. However, as the hacker would need physical access to the computer in order to install it, it’s being dismissed as a real threat.