New Trojan attacks OS X

There is a new Trojan being disseminated around the internet which attacks Apple's OS X system, according to the security company Intego.

Dubbed OSX.RSPlug.A, the Trojan comes disguised with a link to a website with pornographic videos on it. Once the link is followed, the user is told that Quicktime needs to download additional software in order to play the videos. The Trojan will then be installed.

Intego was unable to report on how far the Trojan has been spread so far. This is the first piece of malware to specificially target OS X. Bojan Zdrnja, an analyst at the Internet Storm Center, told Computerworld: "The whole Trojan is relatively simple and works almost exactly the same as its brother for Windows.

"The bad guys are taking Mac seriously now. This is a professional attempt at attacking Mac systems and they could have been much more damaging."

Firefox fixes flaw

Mozilla, the maker of the popular Firefox browser, has released a fix for a vulnerability in QuickTime which was flagged up last week.

A patch for the same flaw was originally issued by Mozilla back in July, however it proved to be incomplete. The flaw is in the way the browser deals with JavaScript code in QuickTime files. Malware could conceivably be disguised as files like .mov and .mp3 which could be installed through QuickTime. Petko Petkov, a security researcher, highlighted the fact that Mozilla's original patch was not enough.

In a security advisory Mozilla stated: "On his blog Petko Petkov reported that QuickTime Media-Link files contain a qtnext attribute that could be used on Windows systems to launch the default browser with arbitrary command-line options. "When the default browser is Firefox 2.0.0.6 or earlier use of the -chrome option allowed a remote attacker to run script commands with the full privileges of the user." Firefox is currently posing a challenge to Microsoft's Internet Explorer to be the most popular browser.