A new piece of malware that takes advantage of a well-documented Java vulnerability has been found on a website dedicated to the Dalai Lama, with the trojan able to install itself on an unwitting Mac user's computer to capture keystrokes and other sensitive data.





Dubbed "Dockster," the malware was first found by antivirus and security firm Intego to have been uploaded to the VirusTotal detection service on Nov. 30. At the time of its discovery, the remote address associated with trojan was not active, possibly indicating that the code's creators were testing whether it would be detected, but as of this writing the malicious code is now "in the wild."

As noted in a separate report from F-Secure (Flashback exploit from September 2011. Dockster leverages the same Java vulnerability to drop the backdoor onto a Mac, which then executes code to create an agent that feeds keylogs and other sensitive information to an off-site server.

In the case of Flashback, which was also discovered by Intego, a reported 600,000 Macs were affected before both Apple and Oracle released a Java patches to remove the malware and protect against future attacks.