I was initially infected by this Flashback trojan on my Mac, and even the manual removal instructions did not get all of the trojan's files, which still tried to send info out over the Internet, but thanks to the Little Snitch app for finding these rogue infected files. I have installed this Java update with no problems. I hope I never see this trojan again on my Mac!

Interesting...it was my understanding that, according to F-secure, Flashback wouldn't install itself if you had Little Snitch (or a host of other programs). Am I reading this wrong?

http://www.f-secure.com/v-descs/troj...shback_i.shtml

Regardless, I ran the update and have done the discovery steps of the manual removal progress, and found nothing.

I know everyone wants to blame Java for this vulnerability and they should, however, allowing an application to auto install by visiting a website? Give me a break. That is something that neither the browser nor the OS should allow. Why they let a browser plugin write anything to disk other than a cookie or an html5 db, I do not know.

It will be interesting to see if Apple can find a way to prevent future threats without resorting to using an active or passive virus/trojan scanner. Locking down the execution of applications to signed apps is one step. Not sure how that will apply to Flash or Java applications started from the browser or malicious code somehow run within the browser.

Yeah, there should be multi-layer protection here. Java should restrict apps, the OS should sandbox Java, and Safari should not be executing Java apps/applets without specific user approval.

I was infected via the Java vulnerability. I used the manual Flashback trojan removal instructions, was reported as infected, and uninstalled the files F-secure recommended. Re-ran the instructions twice and came up clean. Later, someone recommended I try Little Snitch and I installed, and immediately found 2 infected program files trying to send data out to suspicious web sites. Googled the file names and found other Mac users had these same files with the trojan also, so I manually removed these 2 files. Have run Little Snitch ever since and have had no more trojan activity reported.

Also, Apple's Java update and trojan removal tool that was released today did not report the trojan on my Mac, although several other people saw a trojan detected error message like this upon installing the update from Apple today:

https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?f...type=1&theater

They say to also deactivate Java, does that include clicking off both Java and Java Script from Safari Preferences or just Java?

For sure this time!

Despite their name similarity, Java and JavaScript are not related in any way really. JavaScript was named that because of marketing reasons, which to this day confuses most users because it seems absurd that two things with such clearly related names have no relation.

To answer your question, just Java.

I'm skeptical of the whole thing. The original claim was that there were 600,000 infected Macs. Early today (before Apple had released a fix), the claim was that there were 230,000 to 270,000 infected Macs.

So did 60% of the Macs heal themselves? I think it's extremely unlikely that 60% of infected Mac users went through the trouble of fixing the problem manually. Far more likely that the numbers are wrong.