should i be worried about flashback virus?
MacBook
First of all it is not a virus. It is a trojan. This means that you have to give it permission to install itself on your Mac. Also if you disable Java in your browsers then you don't have to worry.
Allan
And I would add: "only if you never care to keep your Mac up to date with all the released security patches." Granted, Apple dragged its feet in putting it out, but with the Java 2012-002 patch released recently, the primary pathway for Flashback to initiate its takeover has been shut.
A malware attack such as this has even greater odds of success on Mac OS X than it does on a Windows system. The Mac OS X system itself is not less secure or prone to infection than Windows per se, but the Mac culture is conditioned to believe the OS is virtually invulnerable. Fewer users have any security software installed to protect their Mac OS X systems, and Mac OS X users are more likely to click links and open files without thinking twice.
It doesn’t help anything that Apple perpetuates the myth of invulnerability. It takes time to develop a patch, but as soon as Apple was aware that the threat existed, it should have proactively communicated to Mac OS X users to make them aware. In fact, it should have provided users with instructions to disable Java and mitigate the threat pending a patch to resolve the issue. The fact that it didn’t is probably a contributing factor to why the Flashback botnet is as large as it is.
It has affected the LARGEST percentage of users of any virus in history. Obviously windows having 95% share would mean more pc's can be hit by a virus, but as far as percentage wise, no windows OS has ever been hit this hard.
So I would say yes, be worried, don't allow Allan trick you into the exact mentallity in which allowed this virus to bread so heavily in the first place.
If you are going to copy and paste this same boilerplate in every Flashback thread, subsituting the name of whatever person is actually trying to help, the least you can do is spell "breed" correctly.
should i be worried about flashback virus?
