Leap-A / Oompa Loompa Worm Infects Mac Computers

A new malware called Leap-A or the Oompa Loompa worm targets Mac OS X, and is the first known worm to infect Mac computers.

MacWorld has an excellent article on Leap-A malware: what you need to know. Some excerpts from that article

“Leap-A—or Oompa Loompa, as it’s also known—is a potentially malicious program that’s disguised as a simple image file. This method of delivery is known as a Trojan horse…”

“Once installed, Leap-A does two things. First, it tries to send a version of itself to everyone on your iChat buddy list. All of your buddies will receive the standard iChat file transfer message, though you won’t see any activity on your end. Second, Leap-A will start infecting Cocoa applications on your machine, via an InputManager that it installs in your user’s directory.”

“The only way you can get the Leap-A malware on your machine is if you take some action to put it there yourself. You might receive a file from a buddy in iChat, or download something from the Internet, or open an attachment to an e-mail message.”

“Leap-A will prevent infected applications from running. The only solution to this problem is to install clean copies of the original applications. So your data isn’t at risk, at least as of now.”

So protect your Mac from viruses by responsible well awared internet usage.