The biggest Mac botnet ever encountered, the OSX/Flashback botnet, is being hit hard. On April 12th, Apple released a third Java update since the Flashback malicious code outbreak. This update includes a new tool called MRT (Malware Removal Tool) which allows Apple to quickly push malware removal code to their user base. The first mission of MRT: remove Flashback.
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When it comes to disclosing a realistic number of unique infected hosts, we strive to be as accurate and objective as possible. Defining a unique host is not trivial, even if OSX/Flashback uses hardware UUIDs. Our data indicates many UUIDs that connected to our sinkhole (a server we set up to capture incoming traffic from bot-infected machines trying to communicate with their command-and-control servers), came from a big range of IP addresses, indicating that there may be UUID duplicates. Virtual Machines or so-called Hack-intosh installations may explain this.
When browsing Hack-intosh forums, we found out that everyone who is using the fourth release candidate of a special distribution has the same hardware UUID (XXXXXXXX-C304-556B-A442-960AB835CB5D) and even discuss ways to arbitrarily modify it.
Oddly enough, we found this UUID connected to our sinkhole from 20 different IP addresses. This indicates that those who considered UUID to count the number of distinct infected hosts probably have underestimated the botnet size.
Flashback evolved a lot in the last few months. The authors moved fast and added obfuscation and fallback methods in case the main C&C server is taken down. The dropper now generates 5 domain names per day and tries to get an executable file from those websites. The latest variants of the dropper and the library encrypt its important strings with the Mac hardware UUID. This makes it difficult for researchers to analyze a variant reported by a customer if they don’t also have access to the UUID.
The fallback mechanism that Flashback uses when it is unable to contact its C&C servers is quite interesting. Each day, it will generate a new Twitter hashtag and search for any tweet containing that hashtag. A new C&C address can be provided to an infected system this way. Intego reported this last month, but the latest version uses new strings. Twitter has been notified of the new hashtags and are working on remediations to make sure the operator of the botnet cannot take back control of his botnet through Twitter.
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Flashback Malware Removal Tool
http://support.apple.com/kb/DL1517
This Flashback malware removal tool that will remove the most common variants of the Flashback malware. If the Flashback malware is found, a dialog will be presented notifying the user that malware was removed. In some cases, the Flashback malware removal tool may need to restart your computer in order to completely remove the Flashback malware.
This update is recommended for all OS X Lion users without Java installed.
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