For many years, people have believed Apple products to be impervious to viruses and other forms of malware. However, that certainly no longer holds true thanks to the iWorm, which appears to have affected 17,000 Mac users. Originally, the iWorm used the popular social networking service, www.reddit.com, to get into computers, but it seems to have evolved beyond that. Now, the virus has thousands of people scrambling for computer support.
What Is It?
This malware is what’s referred to as a backdoor virus. It uses a weakness in computers to come in without the user even knowing it. In this case, the virus installs, creates an operating file, and opens a port in the computer so that it can receive instructions from a hacker.
It originally did this by working through Reddit. Essentially, it was hidden away in a botnet server list on the website and disguised under a fake name that would lead unsuspecting people to assume the file had something to do with the popular online game, Minecraft. Since iWorm was discovered, Reddit shut down that particular string so the hackers could no longer use it. That doesn’t mean Mac users are safe though. That’s because it seems the hackers created another server list somewhere else, and it hasn’t been found yet.
What It Can Do
Why does the iWorm mean Mac users will need computer help? It accomplishes a couple of things for the hackers. Once it is installed and in place, and once the port has been opened, the virus can receive a variety of different instructions. Those instructions, which appear in binary code so that a user would never notice them, can do one of two things:
- Allow the hacker to send other types of malware to the computer, or
- Allow the hacker to take limited remote control of the machine
Either way, the results could be detrimental to the user, who may have private information stored on the computer, and damaging to the machine itself. Some of the things that have already been reported include hacking of sensitive user information, performing GET queries, putting the Mac in sleep mode, and changing configurations on the computer. Any of these issues will mean a user needs computer support to deal with the problem.
Finding the Virus
There is a simple way you can find out if your Mac is infected, and you won’t even need computer help to do it. Just follow these steps:
- Click on Go and then Go to Folder
- From the menu, type in /Library/Application/Support/JavaW or look for this folder
- If the folder doesn’t exist, then you don’t have the virus.
- If the folder does exist, then you have the iWorm.
You can use an antivirus program to remove the malware from your machine, or you can seek computer support services to help you deal with the issue. Remember also that this virus only affects Mac users and those that have OSX, so if you don’t fall into that category, you don’t have to worry.
If you have any reason to believe you have a virus on your machine, contact computer-help.com. We can help you clean your computer and you won’t even have to take it anywhere since we work through remote support.
