Downloading is so much fun, isn’t it? The fun stops, though, when you suddenly get hit by a worm or a Trojan – then the trouble begins. And this is exactly what happened to the thousands and thousands of people who downloaded the pirated version of iWork last week. I am sure that you heard about that not so little brouhaha. Download.com has the story:
Internet security firm Intego said on Thursday that it has discovered a new Trojan horse in pirated copies of Apple’s iWork ’09 productivity software that could allow an attacker to take control of the infected computer.
The Trojan horse, OSX.Trojan.iServices.A, discovered circulating in copies of the software on BitTorrent trackers and other pirate sites, is rated serious, according to Intego’s security alert.
When iWork is installed, the Trojan is installed as a start-up item as a part of iWorkServices. It has read-write-execute permissions for root control of the computer, Intego said. The malware connects to a remote server over the Internet and may download additional components to the infected computer.
As of early Thursday, at least 20,000 people shad downloaded the iWork ’09 installer, according to Intego.
That is the not the end of the story, though. There is another type of malware that has been going around targeting Macs. And people have NOT learned. About 5,000 downloads so far.
Moral of the story? Do not download pirated software. It is as simple as that. And if you still want to, then take the risk.