Quicktime exposure for fake Codec (Macintosh)

[DelJo63]

eWeek.com is reporting:

If Mac users click on the stills to view the videos, they're taken to a site that informs them that the QuickTime Player is unable to play the movie file. They're then instructed to click to download a new codec.

see the article for detailshttp://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1895,2210900,00.asp

The fake codec is a variant of Trojan.DNSChanger, malware that's been plaguing Windows users for some time. Those of us who love Macs (at or are just bilingual with PCs, Windows and Linux) new that this day was on the horizon --

Welcome to tomorrow!

 

[vnf4ultra]

I don't see what the big deal is with this. It isn't like it compromises the mac os, the user has to purposefully install the malware for it to run. In order to become "infected" the user would have to visit one of the "questionable sites" affected, allow it to download a codec, click allow on the mac os warning about downloads, open the disk image, and then double click the installer. I'd think the user would have to abandon common sense to be affected by this, but then again, some people are pretty stupid about internet safety.

 

[DelJo63]

Yes and no. The more video you view, the more accustom you become to loading
new codec. True, on the Mac you have to mount the installer and run it, but
again, it can be come a habit (oh, one of those again) and the process kicks in
without much thought.

It's called Social Engineering; Trapping the user in a well know behavior to cause
infectious software to run on that system.