Viruses, trojans, and other malicious pieces of software are nothing new on OS X. While the mainstream consensus is that Apple‘s desktop platform is impervious to such malware, that’s actually not the case. In fact, a new piece of adware is making the rounds that injects advertisements into web browsers after installing a disguised plugin.
The trojan is detected as “Trojan.Yontoo.1” and it was discovered by Russian security firm Doctor Web. Of course, you have to an install a plugin or other piece of software in order for the trojan to activate, but hackers are making it easy for unsuspecting users to take the bait. They’re prompting users to install a plugin before they can watch a mobile trailer, for example.
Of course, we’ve all come across this scenario before, where we don’t have a certain plugin installed in order to view something, so we’re forced to download and install it before continuing. However, it looks like criminals are taking advantage of that tradition by implementing the same kind of system in order to get users to install the trojan.
It’s said that a Windows version of the trojan also exists, but it doesn’t affect Windows 8 users currently. Cross-platform malware isn’t rare most of the time, but this particular one uses its own code to target each specific operating system, as opposed to targeting a universal piece of software like Java, which we’ve heard plenty about recently.
[via The Next Web]
New Mac trojan injects ads into web browsers using plugin is written by Craig Lloyd & originally posted on SlashGear.
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