Oh, SNAP! Ill-gotten iWork ‘09 might force a reformat of that trusty Mac.

By mike

So I’m interested in this ’cause I run a Mac at home for sanity’s sake. Gizmodo’s reporting about a particularly nasty (possible) result of hoovering that new copy of iWork ‘09 that was announced a few weeks ago: OSX.Trojan.iServices.A.

This may be a first for the Mac software world, and it’s not cool at all: ill-gotten copies of iWork ‘09 circulating on Torrent sites contain OSX.Trojan.iServices.A, which is something you don’t want.

The Trojan parks itself in your /System/Library/StartupItems folder with read-write-execute root privileges—from there it can phone home to a remote server and install additional nasties throughout your system. Right now, the only true fix is a full format and re-install, since its residual pieces can be spread far and wide. You can spot if your particular warez iWork is infected by searching for the iWorkServices.pkg inside the installer.

You know, Macs being invulnerable and all…