Flashback Botnet of Macs Larger than Conficker Network

A huge number of more than 600,000 Macs reportedly are included in a gigantic botnet built with the Flashback Trojan. So, making a comparison of this threat with other huge botnets like the Conficker, the Flashback network of bots proves even larger, state security researchers. Pcworld.com published this in news on April 7, 2012.

In fact, a highly experienced journalist Ed Bott analyzed the above viewpoint of security researchers and after thoroughly studying the infections calculated, and taking cue from the estimated 600,000 of contaminated Macs, which Kaspersky Labs a security company situated n Moscow also confirmed, declared that approximately 1% of the total Macs all over the world had become contaminated. ZDNet published this in news on April 10, 2012. Further Bott, in support of his observation, highlights that the most dangerous malware to attack Windows-based computers happens to be Conficker. However, Conficker contaminated 7m computers when at its peak activity which numbered only 0.7% of the entire Windows-based PCs, he adds.

Consequently, based on the above report, any Mac user today may greatly find that his machine is actually contaminated with the Flashback Trojan compared to a Windows system checked for the Conficker virus during the malware's height of infections. Conversely, malware purveyors can infect more Mac owners easily enough compared to Windows owners.

Still worse is to find how Conficker spent many years for evolving and proliferating, since during 2011 it was continued as being blamed for infecting approximately 1.7m computer systems. In comparison, the Flashback merely began attacking Macs more or less sometime ago, remark security researchers.

In the meantime, as per a renowned Web Analysts company namely Net Applications' latest data, Mac OS X is the second operating system for desktops to be most preferred in the market, accounting for a 6.54% contribution to market share, whereas Windows' market share calculates to 92.48%. Now taking these figures into consideration, the Flashback botnet can be found corresponding to a Windows-based network of bots comprising almost 8.5m computers which means the Trojan poses a still bigger threat compared to Conficker even as the scale analyzed is much smaller.

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» SPAMfighter News - 4/17/2012