A week after the Flashback malware reached its peak at approximately 600,000 infected Mac computers, the number of active infections has fallen to around just 140,000 computers, according to a blog post Wednesday by Symantec. However, this downward trend of infected computers falls short of Symantec"s original estimations.
Despite the number of infected computers dropping by over 460,000 since April 9, Symantec had originally anticipated a greater decline, guessing that by Tuesday a projected 99,000 computers or so would be left with the Flashback malware. This has proven not to be the case, as the number of infected computers has remained around the 140,000 mark, despite tapering off.
The lack of progress beyond the 140,000 mark might be due to the population of computer owners who are unaware of Flashback"s existence and have not checked for software updates recently. Users who are still infected can use tools from Norton, Kaspersky or F-Secure. There is also Apple"s official Flashback removal tool, which is recommended for users of Mac OS X Lion without Java installed. And of course, don"t forget to check for system updates to get the latest version of Java for OS X.
Image Courtesy of Symantec