Reuters has reported that Apple Inc was recently attacked by hackers who infected Macintosh computers of some employees.
Unknown hackers infected the computers of some Apple workers when they visited a website for software developers that had been infected with malicious software. The malware had been designed to attack Mac computers.
“We identified a small number of systems within Apple that were infected and isolated them from our network. There is no evidence that any data left Apple,” the company said in a statement.
The security breach appears to mirror a similar hack at Facebook in January
Few weeks back the microblogging website Twitter has confirmed that unidentified hackers had accessed the website and obtained the data of up to 250,000 of its users.
China has been accused of mounting a widespread, aggressive cyber-spying campaign for several years, trying to steal classified information and corporate secrets and to intimidate critics.
U.S. cyber security firm Mandiant reported over the weekend that it has uncovered evidence that the Chinese military is behind a slew of cyber attacks on U.S. businesses. The White House said it has repeatedly raised concerns about Chinese cyber theft with Beijing.
Apple is the latest high-profile American entity to say it was the victim of a recent cyberattack, following similar admissions by Twitter, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post and the U.S. Department of Energy. While the news organizations said they believed hackers in China were responsible for their intrusions, Facebook, Twitter and Apple have not mentioned China by name.
Security holes in Oracle’s Java have been responsible for a number of the recent attacks.
Apple pointed out in its statement that Macs running the most recent operating system, OS X Lion, have not come with Java pre-installed and that the computers automatically disable the plug-in after 35-days of inactivity.
