Boston/San Francisco: Apple Inc.
was recently attacked by hackers who infected the Macintosh computers
of some employees, the company said on Tuesday in an unprecedented
disclosure that described the widest known cyber attacks against
Apple-made computers to date.
Unknown hackers infected the computers of some Apple
workers when they visited a website for software developers that had
been infected with malicious software. The malware had been designed to
attack Mac computers, the company said in a statement provided to Reuters.
The same software, which infected Macs by exploiting a flaw in a version of Oracle Corp.’s Java software used as a plug-in on Web browsers, was used to launch attacks against Facebook, which the social network disclosed on Friday.
The malware was also employed in attacks against Mac
computers used by “other companies”, Apple said, without elaborating on
the scale of the assault.
But a person briefed on the investigation into the
attacks said that hundreds of companies, including defence contractors,
had been infected with the same malicious software, or malware.
The attacks mark the highest-profile cyber attacks to
date on businesses running Mac computers. Hackers have traditionally
focused on attacking machines running the Windows operating system,
though they have gradually turned their attention to Apple products over
the past couple of years as the company gained market share over Microsoft Corp.
“This is the first really big attack on Macs,” said the
person, who declined to be identified because the person was not
authorized to discuss the matter publicly. “Apple has more on its hands
than the attack on itself.”
National security
Cyber security attacks have been on the rise. In last week’s State of the Union address, US President Barack Obama issued an executive order seeking better protection of the country’s critical infrastructure from cyber attacks.
Over the weekend, cyber security specialists Mandiant
reported that a secretive Chinese military unit was believed to have
orchestrated a series of attacks on US companies, which Beijing has
strongly denied.
White House spokesman Jay Carney told reporters on
Tuesday that the Obama administration has repeatedly taken up its
concerns about Chinese cyber theft with Beijing, including the country’s
military. There was no indication as to whether the group described by
Mandiant was involved in the attacks described by Apple and Facebook.
An Apple spokesman declined to specify how many companies
had been breached in the campaign targeting Macs, saying he could not
elaborate further on the statement it provided.
“Apple has identified malware which infected a limited
number of Mac systems through a vulnerability in the Java plug-in for
browsers. The malware was employed in an attack against Apple and other
companies, and was spread through a website for software developers,”
the statement said.
“We identified a small number of systems within Apple
that were infected and isolated them from our network. There is no
evidence that any data left Apple,” it continued.
The statement said Apple was working closely with law
enforcement to find the culprits, but the spokesman would not elaborate.
The US Federal Bureau of Investigation declined to comment.
Apple said it plans to release a piece of software on
Tuesday, which it said customers can use to identify and repair Macs
infected with the malware used in the attacks.
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