Ryan Majeau Design

The tide has turned on a Trojan which originally targeted Linux users. The Tsunami-A Trojan aims at OS X now. That’s right, for all of you naysayers who think Macs don’t get viruses, they do. It’s happening more and more. Viruses aren’t just for PCs—beware.

Tsunami doesn’t do much—yet. It’s a backdoor Trojan all about recruitment right now, building the army of your infected Macs. They all just sit around listening to an Internet Relay Chat (IRC) channel, waiting for orders from home base.

Once attack time comes, all of the troops are rallied up to hit a targeted website with a crazy amount of traffic. The flood—called a distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack—overloads the site. It can’t work properly anymore and could crash altogether.

Tsunami is more than a one-trick pony though. The Trojan doesn’t just turn your Mac into a blind soldier drone that attacks websites out in the blue. It could also strike close to home (literally) by letting home base remotely take over your Mac or access all of your data too.

The Tsunami Trojan is just the latest in a growing list of malware that targets Macs. One last week even disables the built in anti-malware software in OS X. It’s just more proof the myth that Macs don’t get viruses is history. To keep your Mac safe always keep your security software up to date. If not you and your Mac could be going for a wild ride.