In less than a week, two different forms of Trojan horses have invaded Macs whose users downloaded pirated copies of first Apple iWork 09 and now Adobe Photoshop CS4.
As of Monday morning, 21,000 people had downloaded the first Trojan horse in a pirated copy of iWork, according to Intego, a UK-based developer of privacy and security software for the Mac. The second Trojan horse in a pirated copy of Photoshop had been downloaded 5,000 times.
“If we extrapolate the total number, it is twice that,” said Peter James, a spokesperson for Intego. The company is warning Mac users to avoid downloading pirated software.
Security analyst Jose Nazario of Arbor Networks advised, “Pay for your software. It is not antivirus, it is not patch. There is no vulnerability other than your gullibility.”
The Photoshop exploit, OSX.Trojan.iServices.B Trojan Horse, considered a serious threat, is found in pirated software distributed through BitTorrent trackers and other sites with links to pirated software. The virus is bundled with copies of Adobe Photoshop CS4 for Macs through an application that serializes the program.
Users who download the pirated software will first run a crack application that installs a backdoor director. Once installed, the malware sends an alert to the creator, which can then connect to the infected Mac and take control.
Because the Trojan horse creates a new attack with a different name, it’s more difficult to remove.
“The software installed could do a whole lot of stuff and can be downloading new or totally different software, and leaves open the possibility of keystroke loggers,” James said.
“Basically it forces computers to join a peer-to-peer botnet,” Nazario said. “If they want to install DDOS agent, which is one of the things they can do with a botnet — they can do that.”
And they have, according to James, who said his…