Topless supermodel photos used to spread Mac malware

Somehow I doubt that Mac users are any smarter than their Windows cousins when it comes to resisting temptation.

We’re all human, after all. And there is a (probably significant) proportion of the population which isn’t adverse to searching the web for nude pictures of supermodels.

Of course, the bad guys who spread malware know about human weakness all too well – and exploit it regularly to trick computer users into clicking on files and installing malicious code that exposes them to risks.

Take the most recent Mac malware that we have seen, for instance.

OSX/Imuler-B uses images of supermodel Irina Shayk (no, I’d never heard of her either – but apparently she’s the cover girl in the March 2012 edition of FHM magazine) to do its dirty work.

Here’s a screenshot of a file carrying the OSX/Imuler-B Trojan horse. You can quite plainly see that its icon is of a Irina Shayk (who appears to have left her cardigan at home):

By default, Mac OS X doesn’t display file extensions….

Read more in my article on the Naked Security website.

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Graham Cluley is a veteran of the cybersecurity industry having worked for a number of security companies since the early 1990s when he wrote the first ever version of Dr Solomon's Anti-Virus Toolkit for Windows. Now an independent analyst, he regularly makes media appearances and is an international public speaker on the topic of cybersecurity, hackers, and online privacy. Follow him on Twitter, Mastodon, Bluesky, or drop him an email.

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