Flashback botnet not shrinking, huge numbers of Macs still infected

[err0r]

Contrary to reports by several security companies, the Flashback botnet is not shrinking, the Russian antivirus firm that first reported the massive infection three weeks ago claimed today.

 

Dr. Web, which earlier this month was the first to report the largest-ever successful malware attack against Apple's OS X, said Friday that the pool of Flashback-infected Macs still hovers around the 650,000 mark, and that infections are continuing.

 

Also on Friday, Liam O Murchu, manager of operations at Symantec's security response center, confirmed that Dr. Web's numbers were correct.

 

Both Dr. Web's tally and its contention that infections are ongoing flew in the face of other antivirus companies' assertions. Kaspersky Lab and Symantec, which have each "sinkholed" select domains -- hijacked them before the hackers could use them to issue orders to compromised machines -- used those domains to count the Macs that try to communicate with the malware's command-and-control centers.

 

Earlier this week, Symantec said the Flashback botnet had shrunk by 60% and was down to 142,000 machines. Yesterday, Kaspersky claimed that its count registered only 30,000 infected Macs.

 

Not even close, said Dr. Web in a Friday blog post.

 

"The number is still around 650,000," said Dr. Web.

 

On April 16, the company continued, it said 595,000 different Macs were registered on the botnet, while the next day, April 17, the count was over 582,000.

 

Symantec's O Murchu said Dr. Web is right.

 

"We've been talking with them about the discrepancies in our numbers and theirs," said O Murchu in an interview Friday. "We now believe that their analysis is accurate, and that it explains the discrepancies."

 

When asked for comment, Kaspersky Lab said it was looking into the matter.

 

According to Dr. Web, counts by others were incorrect because of how the malware calculates the locations of command-and-control (C

 

Source: ComputerWorld