Reports show that over a half a million Macs have been infected by the Flashback malware. That’s slightly more than 1 percent of all 45 million Macs worldwide. There is now a free app available that will check your Mac for the trojan.
Infinite LoopArs reader and programmer Juan Leon put together a quick Flashback checker that can be run on its own to see whether the Mac in question is infected. The download is posted to github and can run on Mac OS X10.5 and above; Leon also posted the source code for those interested in checking it out.
The downloadable app runs the three Terminal commands Ars Technica outlined in an article last week. It will either report back “No signs of infection were found.” (That’s what my Mac reported back when I ran the app, thank Jobs.) Or it will spit back information about the infection if found.
The programmer says he didn’t include malware removal code in the app because it would require authentication, and that’s something no on wants to get into right now with a malware infection making the rounds.
