Mac Flashback Infections Drop to 270,000: Symantec
The number of Apple Macs infected with the Flashback malware seems to be shrinking as Internet security software vendors roll out tools to detect and remove the exploit and run “sinkhole” operations to reduce its effectiveness.
According to security vendor Symantec, the number of infected systems worldwide has shrunk to 270,000, less than half of the more than 600,000 discovered by two other security firms earlier this month.
In an April 11 post on the company’s official blog, Symantec officials said that a sinkhole operation they’ve been had seen the number of infections drop from 380,000 to 270,000 in a 24-hour period. The sinkhole operation not only enables Symantec to monitor the Flashback malware, but also to prevent the exploit from contacting the command-and-control servers for more instructions, rendering the malware benign. The bulk of the infected Macs—about 47.3 percent—are in the United States, according to Symantec officials. Canada has the second most infections, at 13 percent.
