Stop The Goblin Army Mac OS
A Trojan Horse, in the computer world, is a potentially devastating type of malware that disguises itself as something desirable in order to be installed or downloaded onto a computer system. Once the Trojan program has been installed, it goes to work with its true purpose, executing malicious activities that greatly compromise the overall security of the system. If your Mac has been infected by a Trojan Horse, the program could do any number of things to the system—from initiating the installation of other viruses or malware programs, to giving a hacker complete remote control of your system.Needless to say, a Trojan Horse is bad news for both you and your computer. But what can you do to avoid this type of malware and the headache it brings, or to detect and delete it from your Mac once you have been infected? Read on to learn more about this particularly malicious type of malware.
During the Trojan War, after a lengthy siege of Troy, the Greeks decided to try to trick their enemies in order to get inside the seemingly impregnable walls of the city. Pretending to sail away in defeat, the Greeks constructed a giant horse and secretly hid soldiers inside. The Trojans, thinking themselves victorious in the war, pulled the horse inside the walls of Troy as a trophy of their triumph. At nightfall, the host of Greek soldiers hiding in the horse emerged and opened the gates of Troy, letting the rest of their army into the city, catching the Trojans off guard, slaughtering the Trojan army, and winning the war.
While Trojan Horses are nowhere near as common for Mac OS X as they are for Microsoft Windows, that doesn’t mean Mac users never have to deal with these kinds of covert attacks. On the contrary, back in 2012, a Mac-based Trojan called “Flashback” made a bunch of headlines—including this Mashable article, which claimed that over 600,000 Mac computers had been infected. In that case, the Trojan disguised itself as an installer for the Adobe Flash Player. Once implemented on a Mac machine, the Flashback Trojan would go to work searching the computer for passwords and personal information. The good news in the case of Flashback is that Apple was quick to solve the problem. Shortly after the Trojan Horse was discovered, Apple released a software update with a security patch that specifically prevented the Trojan from activating its malicious processes. In other words, users could protect themselves from the Trojan or cure the issue by simply staying on top of all OS X software updates. Users should take this story as a lesson to always install updates promptly when they become available, as doing so may be the easiest and best way to take care of any past or future Mac Trojan problems.
While the Flashback Trojan was used for password and data theft, that use is just one of the many applications for which hackers have written Trojan Horse programs over the years. Trojans can also crash your computer, corrupt your files, connect with and infect other computers or devices on your network, hold your computer ransom and demand that you pay a fee to “unlock” your files, watch what you are doing on your screen, log your keystrokes, access your webcam, or install any other type of malware on the system—just to name a few possible effects of infection.
As with other types of malware, you can detect most Trojans using a standard anti-virus or anti-malware program. With that said, keeping your Mac system updated is arguably an even more important safeguard for preventing Trojan Horse infection. It’s also not a bad idea to Google “Mac Trojans” every once in awhile, just to see if there are any types of Trojans that are currently causing problems for a lot of Mac users. Since Trojans are still relatively and blissfully unusual on Macs, most of the bigger Trojan programs that can infect OS X will be reported on by major tech publications. Staying aware of the cyber threats that are out there will help you be more conscious of your internet behavior and more tuned into any unusual symptoms your computer may be exhibiting. The most threatening aspect of computer worms as a type of malware is that they are self-replicating. Where viruses sometimes need to hook up to a specific type of computer program or be actively controlled by a hacker in order to work, worms are so dangerous because they start cloning themselves pretty much the moment they hit your computer. The goal of worms is twofold: first, they seek to exploit known vulnerabilities in an operating system; second, they seek to spread as far as they can, using computer networks, email attachments, file sharing networks, and any number of other methods to move from one computer system to the next.
That’s not to say that worms are exactly the mindless cancer of the computer world. On the contrary, these malicious programs do send data back to a control server, and they can be controlled to help hackers achieve specific goals. For instance, when a website goes down as part of a DDoS (Distributed Denial of Service) attack, the root cause is often a worm that has infected a large number of machines. The hacker who created the worm is then able to create a botnet army with these compromised computers, and can use them to flood a specific target site with huge amounts of traffic or data, essentially killing the bandwidth of the target and resulting in a denial of service for the site. DDoS attacks are difficult to protect against for website administrators, simply because the attack is coming from so many different sources. All of the machines infected with the worm are essentially part of the attack, making it impossible to block specific IP addresses or even distinguish legitimate traffic from malicious traffic.
Luckily for Mac users, worms still haven’t really made their way to OS X. In the past few years, we’ve seen a huge increase in the number of trojan horses, keyloggers, and other types of malware that can infect machines running Mac OS X. However, a Google search for “Mac worms” should reveal that there are no major worm infections to worry about on Mac… yet. According to a Wired article published in August 2015, researchers have created “the first firmware worm that attacks Macs.” What this article essentially proves is that there is nothing about Macs on either a hardware or software level that will prevent worms from infecting OS X computers or spreading from one Mac to the next. A firmware worm hell-bent on attacking Macs could be particularly damaging, since, as the Wired piece notes, fixing the issue would require users to open up their Macs and “electrically reprogram the chip.”Granted, not all worms would impact a Mac’s firmware. Firmware consists of programs or data that are installed to a system’s read-only memory (ROM), after which they cannot be removed. Many worms, while dangerous and destructive, do not have this level of permanence. Still, the point is that the potential is there for Macs to be hit with a catastrophic worm attack.So how can you protect yourself from worm infection? Since worms exploit known operating system vulnerabilities, always keeping your Mac fully up-to-date with all updates and security patches should reduce the likelihood of a worm being able to exploit your machine. Beyond updates, just use common sense in using the Internet: don’t open emails or attachments from people you don’t know or don’t trust, don’t use public file sharing networks, don’t click on links that look spammy, and always run firewall and antivirus software on your system.
The Root of the “Trojan Horse” Name
During the Trojan War, after a lengthy siege of Troy, the Greeks decided to try to trick their enemies in order to get inside the seemingly impregnable walls of the city. Pretending to sail away in defeat, the Greeks constructed a giant horse and secretly hid soldiers inside. The Trojans, thinking themselves victorious in the war, pulled the horse inside the walls of Troy as a trophy of their triumph. At nightfall, the host of Greek soldiers hiding in the horse emerged and opened the gates of Troy, letting the rest of their army into the city, catching the Trojans off guard, slaughtering the Trojan army, and winning the war.Our software library provides a free download of My Kingdom for the Princess II 2.0 for Mac. This Mac application was originally produced by Nevosoft. The latest version of the application is supported on Mac OS X 10.4 or later. The current setup file available for download requires 287 KB of hard disk space. The application is included in Games. Goblin army boots take the design ethos of the goblin army knife and apply it to military footwear. Goblin army boots are sturdy leather boots that strap up to the knee. The heels are very thick, lending another 6 inches to the height of anyone wearing a pair. Contained within the heels of the boots are a number of devices that aid in jumping.
- 🎮 Stop the Goblin Army - arrow keys to steer Made for #LDJAM - theme was Unconventional Weapons Very very rough. Will finish into a proper game once voting is over.
- I actually did notice that last night, in that it starts at the very start of day, which is 4:30AM I believe. I noticed while I was running my server that it auto-saved right as the Goblin Army invasion warning came up. Thanks for the tips my friend. – Lester Peabody Oct 7 '12 at 14:58.
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