The differences between Mac and PC computers are generally well-understood by this point in the Platform Wars. One of the prime selling points for Macintosh has traditionally been its relative immunity from computer viruses. Unfortunately, however, that changed recently when a Trojan virus called Flashback attacked more than 500,000 Macs. Unhappy Mac’s (and Mac users) are fighting the Flashback virus. And although it was pretty much a first-time occurrence, it was an event that’s now giving Mac users plenty of cause for concern.

As a public service to those Mac users, we’re offering the following tips on how to find out if your Mac is hosting the Flashback virus, and what to do about it if your computer is infected. Know Your Enemy: How to Find Out if Your Mac Has a Virus Flashback (which spreads malware) is a very insidious virus, partly because it can get under your computer’s skin even without first gaining an administrative password. It gets “in” by targeting a weakness in Java. That’s not news to Oracle, Java’s creators, which has been proactive in dealing with the matter.

Mac has stayed quite popular over time, and while it's not immune to malware, chances are viruses are not as rampant as you think. However, if you doubt whether your Mac is infected, here are some tips on how to know if you have a virus on Mac.

In February, Oracle came up with a fix for the Java problem. And that would have taken care of Flashback altogether, except for the fact that Apple has its own version of Java and Oracle’s patch would not solve the problem for Apple’s version. And although Apple got its own patch out recently, there was a time delay that gave Flashback the chance to do its worst. Consequently, the die had already been cast for a half million Mac users, whose machines became infected with malware initiated by Flashback. Section 1: Running Diagnostic Tests First things first: You need to determine if your CPU is carrying the virus.

'Dear Customer, At this time we haven't heard anything from HQ regarding this. Kaspersky virus scan for mac. Best Regards, Kaspersky Lab Technical Support' ---------- Many thanks for the advice. Thank you We remind you that you can contact Technical Assistance via email (in this case, please, do not change Subject field) or, in case if you created your request on the portal of Technical Assistance, you will see the direct link below for the quick answer. However if a new build is released it would be a free upgrade, you would have to buy the product again through the App store. ​ • Make sure your built-in Mac firewall is enabled in System Preferences > Security > Firewall • Uncheck 'Open 'safe' files after downloading' in Safari > Preferences > General • Disable Java in your browser (,, ).

The quickest and best way to do this is to use Kaspersky Lab’s. But there is one caveat to following this method: you must first know the universally unique identifier (UUID) for your particular Mac. Don’t worryFortunately, finding your UUID is a painless process How to Find Your UUID • Go to Finder and choose the menu item called “About This Mac.” • Next, locate the “More info” option and select that. • In the next window you see, locate “Hardware UUID.” • Copy the Hardware UUID, which is a lengthy series of 32 numerals and letters. In the event you’re running a MacBook Air, the procedure for locating the UUID is roughly the same: • Go to Finder and choose the menu item called “About This Mac.” • Next, press the button labeled “System Report.” • Within the Hardware Overview, you’ll find the UUID. • Copy the Hardware UUID to your clipboard.

At this point, if you’ve got the UUID, you’re pretty much set. All you need to do is go to, follow the prompts and enter the UUID when requested.

Flashbackcheck will then tell you whether or not your computer is carrying the virus. There are also other ways to find out if your Mac has the virus, if you don’t like the idea of giving a sensitive piece of data (such as the UUID) to an external website. Option 1: Download FlashbackChecker onto your Mac and then simply run the program. Option 2: If you don’t like Option 1, you can also find out if your machine is infected by using your Mac’s Terminal app.

This isn’t terribly complicated but does require some additional maneuvers. • Go to your Applications folder. • Open the Terminal application. • Paste the following line of code within Terminal: defaults read ~/.MacOSX/environment DYLD_INSERT_LIBRARIES • Hopefully, you’ll get the following response: The domain/default pair of (/Users//.MacOSX/environment, DYLD_INSERT_LIBRARIES) does not exist • The key words you’re looking for are “does not exist.” If you get that message, you can relax because it means your Mac is not carrying the Flashback virus.

If you don’t get that message, don’t worrybut your machine is probably infected. Assuming you’re not infected, let’s run a double check to make sure your CPU is clean. • Type and run this line of code: defaults read /Applications/Safari.app/Contents/Info LSEnvironment • With any luck you’ll again receive a message saying that it “does not exist.” • As a further check, type in: defaults read /Applications/Firefox.app/Contents/Info LSEnvironment • Once more, you should see a “does not exist” response. If so, go on about your business, because your Mac is clean. On the other hand, if you don’t get that message, move on to our next section. Get ready to squash some bugs with our step-by-step virus removal instructions. Section 2: Removing the Virus If you’re still reading, we’ll assume that our diagnostic testing has revealed that your machine is indeed infected with Flashback. Here again you have a couple of options you can follow in order to eradicate the menace.