In the past, scams for Windows-based machines avoided using the name ‘Microsoft’ – not that it made any difference to the legality of what they were doing. The Mac scammers have gone a step further by claiming to represent Apple’s Support Centre, to the extent of stealing Apple branding and web pages – and actually tidying them up in the process.
Sophos found the scams by visiting an infected site that displayed various scams, including three related to Apple.
The first was the ‘Support Centre’ trick, which also included an auto-playing text-to-speech voice-over with some glaring errors (apparently the viruses send details to hackers ‘remotely’).
The next pop-up used the tried-and-true ‘YOUR SYSTEM IS INFECTED’ format. Clicking ‘Proceed’ redirected to a fake virus scanner and a warning to download a third-party Mac utility.
The third and final scam took the form of a pretty convincing Flash player update, although ironically Adobe skipped Patch Tuesday this month. The link wasn’t working, though, so Sophos couldn’t check just what damage this one would do.
Macs, famously, are less threatened by cybercriminals than Windows PCs; but attackers are still out there. Sophos’ recommendations to Apple users are pretty standard: use threat protection, don’t click unknown links and beware of shonky paid-for threat protection tools that pull you in with a free scan.
It’s all good advice as too many people put all of their trust in Mummy Apple. If you don’t have an Anti-Virus solution on your Mac we can help you.
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