Rhonda Callow Mac Defender makes a mockery of Mac security myth

Fake antivirus solution targets Mac users.

Macs are better. They “just work” and are completely immune to malware. Well, that’s what the Apple marketing machine would have you believe:

However, a recent Mac malware outbreak would seem to have put an end to that myth. The malware in question was discovered by Intego and is a fake antivirus solution known as Mac Defender. From the Intego blog:

Intego has discovered a fake antivirus program called MAC Defender, which targets Mac users via SEO poisoning attacks (web sites set up to take advantage of search engine optimization tricks to get malicious sites to appear at the top of search results). When a user clicks on certain links after performing a search on a search engine such as Google, they are sent to a web site that displays a fake Windows screen with an animated image showing a malware scan; a window then tells the user that their computer is infected. After this, JavaScript on the page automatically downloads a file.

Once that file is installed, Mac Defender informs the user that their computer is infected by malware and, to drive the point home, automatically opens pornographic websites every few minutes. The supposed solution is, of course, to pay to register Mac Defender. From the blog (again):

Clicking the Register button on the About screen takes users to a web page where they can buy a license for the program: either a 1-year, 2-year, or lifetime license. Users are asked to provide a credit card number, and the web page used is not secure. The scam here is to charge users for a program that doesn’t do anything; the virus warnings presented are bogus, and after paying, they no longer display, so users think the program has done something useful. It is also possible that these credit card numbers, given via an unsecure web page, could be used for other purposes.

Okay, people will invariably point out that this exploit relies on user-inexperience to compromise a system, but so too does much of the malware the affects Windows-based computers. Whichever way you look it, Mac Defender certainly proves that Mac users are not as safe from malware as they may have thought.

And if you thought Apple would be quick to help it’s users deal with the problem, you’d be mistaken. In an interview with Ed Bott of ZDNet, an AppleCare support rep claimed to have been instructed not to help with removal because:

The reason for the rule, they say, is that even though Mac Defender is simple to remove, we can’t set the expectation to customers that we will be able to remove all malware in the future. That’s what antivirus is for.

What do you think, Sync readers? With Apple’s market share increasing, will we begin to see more and more Mac malware? And what do you think about Apple’s response to the problem? Leave a comment and share your thoughts!

[Sources: Intego and ZDNet] [Image credit: Intego]

source : www.sync-blog.com