A Russian anti-virus company recently reported that 600,000 Macs are infected with the latest Mac Trojan Virus called “Flashback.” We wrote about this virus when it first appeared, and now it seems Flashback has implanted itself on a slew of (mostly American) computers - 57% of these computers are in the United States and another 20% is in Canada. “There are no visible symptoms for this Mac virus, except for making sporadic connections to unknown servers that can be only seen in the Firewall logs, if any firewall is in place,” Boris Sharov, CEO of Doctor Web, told Mashable. “The symptoms also depend on the payload that may be downloaded upon the command from the control server.”

Just because the virus has no symptoms doesn’t mean it’s un-detectable. Lifehacker reported on a one-click solution app called FlashbackChecker, which scans your system and tells you if you’ve been infected or not. There are also terminal commands you can enter. This could get messy if you don’t know what you’re doing, so a third option would be to download these commands as two Apple Scripts. Once downloaded and unzipped, simply double-click on “Trojan-check” and “Trojan-check2”. If you get this image then you’ve all good! If you are one of the 600,000 infected, check out F-Secure’s steps for removing the virus.

“Unfortunately, the number of infected computers is still increasing,” Sharov said. “This means that users are careless about security patches, and they shouldn’t be.”

To make sure this virus doesn’t rear its ugly head again, be sure to download the new security patch available for OSX 10.6, OSX 10.7, and OSX Lion. You should also periodically run your software update from the Apple menu to stay up-to-date and safe. It looks like Apple needs to stop waving their virus-free flag - “A Mac isn’t susceptible to the thousands of viruses plaguing Windows-based computers,” Apple boasts on its homepage. “That’s thanks to built-in defenses in Mac OS X that keep you safe, without any work on your part.” Insert eye roll here.

**UPDATE** Apple Releases Mac Flashback Trojan Removal Tool

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