Phishing trojan targets Mac OSX

DNS hijack disguised as codec threatens Apple systems.

A new trojan affecting

Apple

‘s

Mac OSX

operating system – a relative rarity in the malware world – has been seen in the wild. The trojan, thought to belong to the highly prevalent Zlob (aka Puper) family, is being served by numerous fake codec sites, linked to from porn sites. Once installed, the trojan hijacks DNS settings to redirect visits to

PayPal

and some online banking sites to phishing sites.

The trojan, first reported by

Mac

security specialist

Intego

, uses typical social engineering tactics to persuade users to install it. Links to content on porn sites bring up a message saying a certain codec is required to play the media, redirecting users to the trojan download sites, which are apparently locale-aware and provide trojans set up to target local financial institutions.

Once the user has agreed to the install and granted it root access to the system, the trojan doctors DNS pointers to ensure any attempt to visit certain sites will be taken instead to phishing sites modelled on the real versions, which can then gather highly sensitive login information for theft and ID fraud purposes. Other web requests may be redirected to advertising or porn sites.

More details on the attack are at

Intego


here

, at the

SANS Internet Storm Center


here

, at

Sunbelt


here

or at

McAfee


here

.

Posted on 01 November 2007 by

Virus Bulletin