More than 600,000 Macs infected with Flashback Trojan downloader

That's a lot, but they can't compare to PC's yet

Queue someone laughing with the "no viruses for Mac" adagio...

Wait, i just did it...

I haven't been infected thank you ClamXav and well done to my lack of ignorance enabling Mac OS X built in firewall, lets be honest here though this is not the first time Java has been under this sort of publicity, I also believe there was a similar thing with flash, and thats why ladies and gentle men I have moved on from making websites with flash HTML5 ftw!

I cant wait to watch Apple and it's isheep followers explain this one away.....LOL!!

They won't they will turn it on other brands, they will now use the excuse of "Well now we are getting more popular"

If I remember rightly there was an iPod virus a few years ago, all of that got shoved to Microsoft (tbh Apple was the carrier of the virus, it didn't do anything until you plugged it into a Microsoft computer and it infected millions of other portable storage devices around the world)

And I will say I think lots of the Apple fanboys that where so ignorant to the virus thing are dying off or keeping very quite these days, I worked with a contractor in a school when we where fitting Mac Os X into the music department, and I asked him he's views on viruses and I stated about if they where more popular that they would be getting attacked more and because I wanted to install antivirus software across the network, and he's response to this was "Mac's getting viruses is and always will be a myth" I wonder where he is now?

quote: ""Queue someone laughing with the "no viruses for Mac" adagio...""

This is just urban myth that died out in the early 2000's . And the people that do say it are just silly. Its good thing that windows has no silly users.

quote: ""They won't they will turn it on other brands, they will now use the excuse of "Well now we are getting more popular"""

are you saying they are getting malware now because they are NOT getting more popular? True reasons are never excuses but rather reasons.

Of course the US would have the highest percentage

I think there getting them because groups that make viruses want to be the ones that did, I'm not one to be saying anything about popularity as I simply don't know what the figures are on the amount of users from one system to the next, I'm just speculating on what might happen or be said.

Not really surprising as the Mac people don't think they can get viruses, since they have been told that. If you can't get them, no need to protect your computer, no protection means you are more likely to get something.

An urban myth? They should probably tell their apostles in the Apple Stores then - I've heard that "Macs don't have viruses" diatribe spouted off multiple times in the last 6 months (in different stores) as part of the sales pitch to convince hapless buyers as to why the Macbook is "worth so much more than a PC."

It's all well and good trying to argue the difference between the term virus and trojan, but as long as it got through it's still open to other things happening, for a while now windows machines that get infected with a trojan often fall apart from there getting viruses shortly afterwards depending on the type of attack the trojan is scripted to do, people have tried and failed before to argue the difference between the two, but with AV software reporting trojans as found viruses you're not going to change anyones minds or terminology's of explaining that they have a virus or trojan.

And yeah I agree fanboyisum is rife I've been fighting it for a years but I feel the need to give up!

Forgive my ignorance, as I've always thought of a trojan as being a special type of virus. I've always seen virus as a general term for all infection aside from ad-ware.

Since you brought it up, I can see now that virus has a category to itself.

Malware includes: (Malware Wikipedia link)

• computer viruses
• worms
• trojan horses
• spyware
• adware
• most rootkits

To be honest I've never really separated spyware and adware into their own categories either. :/

Instead of keeping up with which one belongs to what category, I will refer to everything as malware.

You just proved my point above most people (I'm also guilty as above) find it quicker and easier to just place them under one term, the average user cares not for the difference but worries just as much the same be it virus,trojan, malware act.

... because EVERY layman knows "Macs can't catch viruses" lol

You're trying to shift the blame away from Apple but the point everyone is making is that the OS X platform is vulnerable, which it is. Doesn't matter if it's through third-party holes or not. The point is that the OS X platform can be and is being exploited.