Pinhead Mac Trojan sticks it to fanbois

HellRTS-D snooping for backdoors

Miscreants have created a new strain of Trojan horse malware that establishes a backdoor on compromised Macs.

HellRTS-D (AKA Pinhead-B) disguises itself as the iPhoto photo application. The Trojan is a new variant of a strain of malware first reported in 2004, reports Mac security specialist firm Intego.

The Trojan, developed using RealBasic, is designed to set up its own server on compromised systems, and from there send email or contact a remote server. HellRTS-D has been spotted on various online forums but is not thought to be spreading, so the threat posed by the malware is currently low.

Anti-virus firms including Intego and Sophos have already added detection for the Trojan in updates to their Mac security software products. ®