Malware Expanding Its Horizons
The focus of malware authors used to be almost solely restricted to the Windows domain as the number of Microsoft systems vastly dwarfed any of its competitors. However, as the popularity of alternative platforms grows, the criminal return on targeting them increases. Only a few days ago, a kit emerged for miscreants to automatically develop malware binaries that take advantage of OS X users similar to the Zeus kit. Another attack against OS X machines came in the form of the highly polished Mac Defender trojan which portrays itself as a security tool finding all sorts of non-existent malware on a system in order to fool users into purchasing it (and giving away their credit card information). Lastly, a new botnet was discovered written in Java seemingly to make cross-platform ownership a reality.