Mac Trojan Horse Found In Pirated Photoshop CS4

Ed Sutherland ()

Mac Trojan Horse Found In Pirated Photoshop CS4A new trojan horse variant has been found in pirated versions of Adobe’s latest version of the Photoshop suite, security researchers warned Monday. The trojan horse is considered a “serious” security risk, opening Macs to malicious takeover by remote users.

The Trojan horse, OSX.Trojan.iServices.B, is included in Photoshop CS4 cracking software distributed on file-sharing networks such as BiTorrent, according to security software developer Intego.

“The actual Photoshop installer is clean, but the Trojan horse is found in a crack application,” Intego announced in a statement.

Nearly 5,000 people have downloaded the pirate installer as of 6 a.m. Eastern, the company said.

The crack installs a backdoor in /var/tmp/ and then requests the administrator’s password, launching a backdoor. That backdoor connects to two Internet addressess, allowing the hacker to remotely control a Mac, including downloading infected Mac software.

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Just days before, a previous version of the Trojan used infected Macs to conduct distributed denial of service attacks. Since the latest version contacts the same Internet servers, there may be a similar motive, according to the firm.

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Ed Sutherland

Ed Sutherland is a veteran technology journalist who first heard of Apple when they grew on trees, Yahoo was run out of a Stanford dorm and Google was an unknown upstart. Since then, Sutherland has covered the whole technology landscape, concentrating on tracking the trends and figuring out the finances of large (and small) technology companies.

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  • F.

    And so it begins…

  • OlsonBW

    I can only wish that these people’s computers would burst into flames. It would serve them right for stealing.

  • matt

    This has been going on for a decade in the PC world. If you’re going to steal high dollar apps you have to be content with the risk. IMO it’s not worth it!!!

  • Duality

    I still feel this could all be avoided if Adobe actually charged a reasonable fee for the software they’re providing. I know, I know, they work hard on it for years. However OSX (for example) has a hell of a lot of work in it yet I can pick it up for under $100 (AU) if I’m lucky!

    If they sold it at a reasonable price, people wouldn’t steal it, at least not in the numbers they do today.

    Not advocating stealing, just commenting on how it may be reduced by not ‘ripping off’ your customers… We aren’t all massive corporations that can afford this stuff.

  • imajoebob

    Well, Elements is reasonably priced.

    No matter. This is an obvious result of the growing perception of the Mac as a commodity. The average user is now less sophisticated (not a knock, just reality), so it’s easier to attack. But it still requires the cooperation of the user.

    These are not, by any interpretation, viruses. These is a Trojan Horse that still has to be done one computer at a time. It’s far from the “holy grail” of hacking OS X.

  • http://macphobia.com MacPhobia

    I used to hear there are not spyware, malware , viruses for Mac.. Mac FANBOYS ????