A common cause of adware these days is nefarious browser pop-ups. You’re on a webpage, let’s say, and you get a notice that you need to update Adobe Flash. You click through the prompts to install it (because you’re a good little Apple user, and you always stay up to date!), and suddenly, you’ve got a new homepage. Or your search page looks weird. Yup, you’ve got adware. Before you start, check the version of Safari running on your Mac. To display the version number, choose Safari > About Safari. If your Safari version is 11.0 or later, follow the steps in For Mac OS X 10.11, macOS 10.12, and later. If your Safari version is 10.0 or later, follow the steps in For Mac OS X 10.10. I walked through, but to avoid it in the future, know that it’s always best to check for updates to Flash, for example, through System Preferences rather than trusting that a browser pop-up you’ve seen is legitimate. So if you’ve gotten one of those Flash pop-ups, close out of it (without agreeing to install anything, force-quitting your browser if necessary!), and then head on over to System Preferences to check if what you saw was real. When you get there, look for “Flash Player” near the bottom of the window. Click that, and within that pane, you’ll see an “Updates” tab. Under that tab, there are two buttons at the bottom; the NPAPI plug-in is the one that Safari uses, and PPAPI is the one for Chrome. It’s all right not to have both of them installed, but for whichever ones you do, click “Check Now” to find out whether you’ve got any legitimate updates available. If your machine does need an update, you’ll be asked whether you’d like to download and install it, and then you’ll walk through some pretty typical steps to do so—click “Install Now” on Adobe’s page, wait for it to download, then double-click it from Safari’s “Downloads” toolbar icon and follow the prompts afterward. But this way, you’ll know for sure that what you’re getting is actually from Adobe and not from HorribleAnnoyingBrowserAdware.com. Unless you really like NSFW pop-ups randomly appearing, in which casewellmore power to you, I guess! + + Mac Users Attacked Again by Fake Adobe Flash Update Posted on April 12th, 2016 by Mac users are once again being urged to exercise caution when installing updates to Adobe Flash Player, after a fake update was discovered infecting computers. Intego security experts have identified the rogue package installer as a variant of OSX/InstallCore, and have updated definitions to provide protection. The in-the-wild attack has been spread in the form of a Mac Package installer.pkg file, also known a flat package, and has been signed with a legitimate Developer ID certificate — effectively tricking OS X's built-in Gatekeeper security to believe that the files can be trusted and are not malicious. Curiously, if the Mac Package installer, called Product.pkg, is located outside the DMG volume and the DMG volume Installer is unmounted, then you will receive a 'Missing parameters' error. However, if the Package installer is located in the DMG volume, then you will be prompted to continue the installation. As a result, victims may find that their OS X computers have had a number of potentially unwanted programs (PUPs) installed on their systems. Intego researchers report that third-party apps they have seen being installed by the fake Adobe Flash update include MegaBackup, ZipCloud, and MacKeeper. Embedded within the installer's code is a copyright message, referencing an Israeli company that develops the InstallCore software installation platform, and has been criticised in the past for: Copyright © 2016 ironSource. All rights reserved. Two months ago we described how an after Mac users began to see bogus pop-up warnings about Adobe Flash requiring an update, which resulted in scareware being installed onto their computers. In both this and the previous instance, online criminals signed their malicious code with an Apple developer certificate, allowing the malware to bypass a key part of OS X's built-in defence. In an attempt to prevent malicious code from infecting OS X computers, by default you are only allowed to run programs that have been downloaded from the official App Store or that have come from 'identified developers.' By using a valid Apple developer certificate, the attackers are tricking OS X into believing that their code can be trusted and allowed to execute — with potentially dangerous consequences. There are a variety of to allow malicious code to sneak onto computers, but presently it seems the simplest method of all is to sign your code with a developer's certificate.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. Archives
March 2019
Categories |