Security & Privacy

More news from the VB2009 conference. A malware researcher made a presentation describing how a Russian network of “spam and malware affiliates” were actively seeking people to infect Macs. Reporting on threatpost, Ryan Naraine says that this network was, “offering $0.43 for each malicious install, a price tag that suggests the Mac platform is becoming more and more lucrative to online crime gangs.”

While this is a pittance, an effective campaign of using Trojan horses to infect Macs could easily net tens of thousands of computers. This price could interest people in certain countries where the cost of living is much lower than in the West. And, after all, it’s not that hard to set up a web site with these Trojan horses; the hard part is luring Mac users to them, and getting them to install the malware.