Mac Trojan disguised as Flash Player initiates redirection attack

There’s a new Mac OS X Trojan in town, and it masquerades as a FlashPlayer.pkg installer, warns F-Secure.

“Once installed, the trojan adds entries to the hosts file to hijack users visiting various Google sites (e.g., Google.com.tw, Google.com.tl, et cetera) to the IP address 91.224.160.26, which is located in Netherlands,” say the researchers.

The infected users are consequently faced with a fake Google Search page that looks very much like the legitimate one and is unlikely to raise suspicions as the URL in the address bar says google.com.tw or similar (but without the www).

When the victim uses the search, he is given seemingly credible search results:

Unfortunately for him, a click on any of the offered links doesn’t result in him being taken to the destination sites, but triggers pop-up pages.

These pages are currently empty, since remote server from which the content is pulled is down at the moment, but that doesn’t mean that it won’t be up very soon and start serving ads or links to malicious content.

Users are advised to be careful when downloading software or updates from the Internet – it’s always best to download it from official product pages.