How bad is the Mac malware scare? (FAQ)

http://news.cnet.com/8301-27080_3-20064394-245.html

Macintosh users are being targeted with malware that poses as an antivirus warning and tries to trick people into paying for software they don't need.

This ruse isn't new. So-called rogue antivirus has been hitting Windows machines for years. But this is the first time this type of malware has been written to target the much smaller Mac market.

This FAQ sorts through the facts to help determine how serious the issue really is.

What is the malware?

Mac Defender, also known as Mac Security and Mac Protector, is a fake antivirus program that is designed to scare people into thinking that their computers are infected with malware and that they have to pay with a credit card to clean the machine up. People get infected with the rogue antivirus programs when they happen to stumble upon Web sites hosting the malware. The malicious sites are created solely to distribute malware and they are search engine optimized so they will appear high up in search results. They use an image related to a popular news topic as bait to lure people to the site, according to Mac antivirus firm Intego, which warned about Mac Defender earlier this month. For instance, one of the sites was in the top five spots this week for searches on "DSK," or Dominique Strauss-Kahn, the French official on the International Monetary Fund who was arrested on sexual assault charges last weekend, according to Intego spokesman Peter James. The malicious sites are taken down and changed from day to day so blocking them is difficult.

*much more at link*

Much appreciated. :toast:

:toast:

...and I think most users would.

There are, however, people who use Macs who go about opening attachments, clicking on pop-up windows, and doing other careless things.

These are the opportunities to be roped into giving up personal information and being screwn.

It's not quite the same as getting a virus.

Indeed, malware and other dangers (like phishing emails) exist for all computer users, regardless of Operating System employed.

:patriot:

a native OS X system notification.

The only way you can tell that it is being generated by the web site within your browser is if you minimize your open window to the dock, or move it almost all the way off your screen, otherwise it looks completely legit.


Very tricky

though it looks pretty legitimate and scary. I did what this article says to do, so I must be more computer literate than I thought.

It tried to get me this week. Fortunately (sort of, lol) I had this nasty beast on my school PC and learned my lesson to just shut the tab.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/05/20/mac_scareware_win_rogue_similarities/

Researchers at Microsoft have discovered striking similarities between the recently emerged wave of scareware packages targeting Mac fans and the longer established rogue anti-virus applications for Windows.

MacDefender falsely warns that Mac OS X machines are infected with malware in a bid to trick prospective marks into buying a supposed security package that actually does more harm than good. Like its Windows cousin, the scam starts after users are tricked – via search engine manipulation and other ruses – into visiting an imitation scanner interface.

But the similarities between MacDefender (dubbed FakeMacdef) and Winwebsec, a strain of scareware for Windows machines, go far deeper than that.

For one thing, the URL format that FakeMacdef calls home is almost identical to that which we see in Winwebsec. In additional, the purchase pages use the same payment gateway. Finally, as a blog post by Microsoft illustrates, the interfaces on both products are almost the same.