News from ITCS: Fall Term 2007
Macintosh Users Need Anti-Virus Software Too
Viruses and other malware aren't just for Windows. A new Trojan horse targeted at the Macintosh was released this week.
The first step toward getting infected is a spam e-mail message directing recipients to a web site with pornographic videos. The website instructs people to download a tool to allow them to view the videos. When they do so, the Trojan horse is downloaded to their computer. The Trojan horse then hijacks some of the user's web requests, redirecting the user to phishing web sites or to web pages displaying ads for pornographic web sites.
The University's anti-virus software for Macintosh users—Sophos Anti-Virus—detects and prevents installation of this Trojan horse as of November 1.
According to the Sophos weblog: "This is not a red alert, but it is a wake-up call to Mac users that they can be vulnerable to the same kind of social engineering tricks as their Windows cousins. The truth is that there is very little Macintosh malware compared to Windows, but clearly criminal hacker gangs are no longer shy of targeting the platform."
ITCS encourages all U-M Macintosh users to take advantage of the software made available to them to protect their computers from malware. Instructions for downloading and installing Sophos Anti-Virus are on the Virus Busters website.
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