The developer of Real Player and Harmony has officially filed a class-action lawsuit against these users and Apple. The Class law suit is a type of lawsuit that collectively put forward a claim in which a class of defendants is being sued. Class action is predominantly used in the U.S as it has become redundant in many Europe states and replaced with civil law.  A class action can be used (amongst other reasons) when the size of the group is so large it is best dealt with in one single case rather than multiple individual cases.

So why are they suing Apple again?  Well in 2004 RealNetworks developed a service called Harmony which is a digital rights management service.  The service enabled users to play music from downloaded via RealPlayer music store on the IPod.

All IPod users are aware that in order for music to be assessable to play it must available in ITunes first.  Apple developed a firmware update shortly after it was announced Harmony with filing a law suit against them. The update had blocked users from being able to upload music sing harmony and other services.

The lawsuit claims that Apple were responsible for breaching federal and state law by developing and dispensing software that would stop IPod users from playing music that was not bought via ITunes. The update made it at prices was increase more than they should have been.

There were a few disgruntled users that filed anti-trust lawsuits against Apple, claiming that Apple where unlawfully blocking the competition and it has been picking up speed.

If you happen to be one of those IPod users which includes: 1st to 4th Gen Nanos, 2nd to 3rd Gen Touches, 1st to 3rd Gen Shuffles and 5th Gen IPods. You will be included in the lawsuit but you can opt out if you don’t want to be part of it.

The modulus operandi of this virus starts with the download of the update to the Adobe Flash Player which is being sent in by the hackers to the victim’s computer. This virus is disguised as an update of the Adobe Flash Player which makes it less suspicious by the user. The company said that it has identified the weakness that is exploited by the virus and is working forward towards it so that no similar threat in the future can be generated. The weakness would be killed soon added company’s spokesperson.

The company took advantage of the weakness in the Java applet and other programs that are related to the programming language. The malicious software does its dirty work by receiving updates and directions from the computer servers which are hosted by the malware authors. Apple has tied up with a number of internet service providers to block these servers which are hosted by the malware authors.

According to a leading computer security magazine, more than half a million Macintosh computers have been infected by this virus and still counting. The Flashback Trojan malware is a tailored version of the virus which is developed for PCs that are powered by the Windows.

Another security firm, F-Secure and Russian antivirus program maker, Dr. Web has been claiming since a long time the Mac computers are very much vulnerable to the attacks and the hackers these days are aiming more and more towards the Mac computers. The company has further expressed its concern on the attack and estimated that about 600,000 computers might be affected by this virus attack. The virus program has been designed to let the hackers steal your personal and private information such as account passwords, banking details and much more.