Well now... Apple seems to be gaining on MS in the "who can we mess with now..." department.

Unless you've been living under a rock for the past week, you've probably heard about Flashback, a piece of malware targeting users of Apple's Mac OS X that's now estimated to be quietly running on more than 600,000 machines around the world.

That number, which came from Russian antivirus company Dr. Web earlier this week, was confirmed today by security firm Kaspersky. More than 98 percent of the affected computers were running Mac OS X, the firm said.

That's certainly a big number, but how does it stack up to past threats?

"It's the biggest, by far," Mikko Hypponen, chief research officer at antivirus and computer security firm F-Secure, told CNET in an e-mail. "I'm afraid the malware-free times of Mac users are behind us permanently."

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Damn.. that's a lot of Apples....

Apple released an update to Java bringing the version on Mac to 1.6.0_31 for Mac’s running OS X. This patch actually closes multiple vulnerabilities that were found in the previous Java version being 1.6.0_29. The most serious exploit that it patched was the allowance of malicious code to be executed by visiting a compromised website.

Users who visited a compromised website would unknowingly participate in the Flashback botnet. A Russian security firm Dr.Web claims that approximate 600,000 Mac’s have already been infected. The statistics include 19.8% in Canada, 56.6% in the US, 12% in the UK, and 6.1% in Australia with those statistics being the largest, Check out the graphic at the top of the article for more.

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Security researchers from Intego, have intercepted several new variants of the Flashback Mac OS X trojan.

According to the company, the new variants of the Flashback trojan use three different infection vectors in an attempt to trick end users into installing the malware.

More details on the infection vectors:

This new variant of the Flashback Trojan horse uses three methods to infect Macs. The malware first tries to install itself using one of two Java vulnerabilities. If this is successful, users will be infected with no intervention. If these vulnerabilities are not available – if the Macs have Java up to date – then it attempts a third method of installation, trying to fool users through a social engineering trick. The applet displays a self-signed certificate, claiming to be issued by Apple. Most users won’t understand what this means, and click on Continue to allow the installation to continue.

Once the end user gets tricked into installing the malware, the Flashback trojan will patch web browsers and network applications in order to search for user names and passwords.

Read the full story HERE!

Interesting that Google is now the "bad guy..." how times have changed.