MACDefender, a fake security program for Apple has racked up a significant number of victims. The people who have installed the software needed to go to Apple’s forum in order to ask help on how to remove it.
In a posted blog, journalist Ed Bott wrote that more than 200 separate discussions on Apple’s official forum are talking about MACDefender.
It was said that the existence of fake Mac anti-virus software had started on May and still continues to rack up victims. MACDefender is an example of a scareware whose game is to encourage the users to install software that will somehow and pretend to scan a machine problem. However, the real problem is that it fabricates a list of threats it has found and will ask for cash before they are to start fixing these non-existing problems.
Sophos Senior Technology consultant Graham Cluley said the scareware’s creators had used the search engines in order to bring the program in front of potential victims. They are able to do that because they provide links with “harmless” phrases like “Mothers Day.”
Firing up the browser of unattended machines and calling up of different (–foul word(s) removed–)ographic websites are just few of the tricks that are used by scareware like MACDefender.
He added that for example if we are to search for something in Google images, if we are to click the image, we are brought to a webpage that serves up the attack – regardless whether you are running Mac OS or Windows.
Vast majority of malware that Sophos and other security firms according to Mr. Cluley eyes Windows user. Every day, about 100,000 novel malicious programs are detected for Windows alone.
He added that Mac OS X gets less malware existence compared to Windows but it doesn’t mean that there are no Mac Threats out there.
