Mac Trojan hits Twitter

A Mac and PC Trojan is being perpetuated through Twitter, accounts say. Guy Kawasaki, a well-known venture capitalist, is said to have accidentally retweeted a link to a porn video, claiming to contain footage of Gossip Girl actress Leighton Meester. Should users actually click the link, they are taken to a website asking to install a video codec; the file is in reality the OSX/Jahlav-C Trojan, or in the case of Windows users, TROJ_JAHLAV.B.

Kawasaki comments that the offending message originated with a NowPublic feed, which his Twitter account is set to automatically rebroadcast. The threat would be minimal except for the number of accounts following Kawasaki, which total over 139,000; a number of less popular Twitter users are also said to have accidentally retweeted the link.

Security firm Trend Micro notes that aside from previously-reported effects, the Trojans are known alter DNS tables, throwing off the connection between URLs and IPs.

by MacNN Staff