Despite Apple's release of numerous Java patches and an uninstaller tool, some 140,000 Macs worldwide are still affected by the Flashback trojan that was at one point present on 600,000 machines.
Although malware-affected Macs are on the decline, the numbers are at a point much higher than forecasted by software maker Symantec, according to a Tuesday post on the company's blog.
Coming on the heels of its Thursday Java update, Apple has released a separate program to remove the so-called Flashback trojan that has affected over 600,000 Macs worldwide.
SOFTWARE DEVELOPER Adobe has announced plans to buy back $2bn of its own stock to avoid dilution.
Adobe's board approved a plan to repurchase $2bn of its common stock by 2015 in a bid to avoid dilution. The firm recently reported a decline in profits and its announcement is meant to promote an image of calm, with the firm claiming it will "return value" to Adobe's stockholders.
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.
A Russian security firm says it's found an alarming 600,000 OS X machines infected with the Flashback trojan.
The firm, called Dr Web, first said that it had found half a million infected computers but later upped the number in a tweeted message, where it added that some of the bots are in Cupertino.
Apparently the Java exploits used in the Flashback Trojan is catching on and researchers are starting to see malware that appear to be making use of the same route of attack.
Here's an interesting weekend project - Nuno Alves has built himself his own $85 PDF password cracker using the BeagleBone, tapping into the power of it's 700 MHz ARM processor to do the cracking.
In a move aimed at helping users understand the real-world risks associated with security vulnerabilities in its products, Adobe is now adding “priority ratings” to its security bulletins.
The addition of priority ratings will differentiate between security vulnerabilities that are being targeted by live exploits; security flaws that are historically at elevated risk; and vulnerabilities that may be theoretically dangerous but are almost never targeted by attackers.
Some of us deal with a plethora of PDF documents. Perhaps we need to make various edits and comments to the documents, or maybe we need to convert the PDFs into a different format like a Word document. Unfortunately, depending on the sources that we acquire our PDFs from, some of the files may in fact be secured, meaning no edits or changes can be allowed on the document for content integrity reasons.
Adobe today patched a pair of critical vulnerabilities in Flash Player and told IT administrators to apply the update within 30 days.
The update was the second for Flash this year; Adobe last patched it less than three weeks ago.
