Apple Mac assaulted by second worm
Just a week after the first virus hit Apple's Mac, a second worm has been detected on the OS X. The worm, called OSX/Inqtana-A, uses an old Bluetooth vulnerability to spread from computer to computer.
The Inqtana worm uses a glitch called CAN-2005-1333 to implant itself in other computers, but Apple had released a patch for this hole in mid-2005. Hence, it is unlikely to prove a significant threat.
But security company Sophos has asked Mac users to keep their software updated in order to avoid being exposed by this particular glitch, "It's disturbing to see a second worm for Mac OS X so soon after the first, but it should be remembered that this is only two, compared to well over 100,000 viruses for Microsoft operating systems," said Graham Cluley of Sophos.
"The good news is that Inqtana is not going to spread successfully in the wild, but this announcement will still be a shock to those in the Mac community who thought hackers were not interested in their operating system."
A new report released by the company has said that 79 percent of Mac users believed that the OS X was the new target of malware writers. But it must be noted that although there have been two threats in the span of a few days; neither appears to be lethal to the Mac systems. Unlike the viruses that target Microsoft Windows OS, these Mac viruses do not wipe out the valuable data.
However as Cluley, a senior technology consultant at Sophos pointed out, users are worried that the next attack will carry a significant payload, "The question on everyone's lips is - when will we see the next one, and will it have a more malicious payload?" he said. "Apple Mac users need to be just as careful about protecting their computers with anti-virus software, firewalls and security patches as their friends and colleagues using Windows."
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