Mac fake anti-virus attack adopts new disguise

New versions of the latest malware to hit Mac OS X users have come to light, following the discovery earlier this week of fake anti-virus attacks being spread by SEO poisoning.

Fake anti-virus (also known as scareware or rogueware) is commonly seen on Windows computers, of course, but until now has been rarely encountered on the Apple Mac platform.

The new variants, seen by SophosLabs, are calling themselves “Mac Security” rather than their previous disguise of pretending to be “MacDefender” (which, incidentally, is the name of a genuine security product for the Mac – adding to the confusion).

When I ran the fake anti-virus on a test machine it claimed that a number of innocent files, including Mozilla Firefox, were infected by viruses and told me I would have to register the…

Read more in my article on the Naked Security website.

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Graham Cluley •   @gcluley

Graham Cluley is a veteran of the anti-virus industry having worked for a number of security companies since the early 1990s when he wrote the first ever version of Dr Solomon's Anti-Virus Toolkit for Windows. Now an independent security analyst, he regularly makes media appearances and is an international public speaker on the topic of computer security, hackers, and online privacy. Follow him on Twitter at @gcluley, on Mastodon at @[email protected], or drop him an email.