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New Mac Ransomware Discovered
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Thorzdad
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Jul 5, 2020, 04:33 PM
 
Researchers have uncovered a new Mac-targeted ransomware. It also targets passwords, card numbers, etc.

Short version: You have to DL warez and bypass security alerts to get it on your Mac. Still, it’s kind of an interesting development.
     
ghporter
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Jul 5, 2020, 07:57 PM
 
I was recently caught by a benign looking download. It came from a page that was supposed to give me a certificate for a continuing education course I'd just completed. Somehow the legitimate education provider's page* was corrupted with a link that said my Flash installation was out of date.

Yeah, it was Flash, but some places use Flash to customize documents on the fly, so I clicked. Obviously I shouldn't have.

It hijacked my browsers - both Chrome and Safari. And it shifted Chrome to "managed" so I couldn't even un-bork it. So I dialed Time Machine back about two days before that debacle and reloaded. Then I spent much of an evening logging back into this or that.

Now I should point out here that I'm a computer security guy from way back. Remember the Happy New Year virus, or Melissa from 1999? I do, and I spent a couple weeks rebuilding machines because some folks couldn't be trusted not to click on stuff. In other words, I should know better. And yet I still clicked the sketchy link.

So I'm betting that there will be very cool, very appealing, and very legit-looking warez that will be carriers for this particular bit of nastiness. And as if we didn't have enough else to keep our guards up about, this is something that's going to be a growing problem. Even with the built in security of the Mac environment.

* Of course I have let the CE provider know what happened, and they sent me a link by email that did what it was supposed to do. In the future, I won't be caught like that again. It'll be some other way.

Glenn -----OTR/L, MOT, Tx
     
subego
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Jul 5, 2020, 08:09 PM
 
How much Flash needs to die can’t be expressed with words.
     
Laminar
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Jul 6, 2020, 09:06 AM
 
My parents' Downloads folder is basically:

Flash Installer.dmg
Flash Installer (1).dmg
Flash Installer (2).dmg
Flash Installer (3).dmg
Flash Installer (4).dmg
Flash Installer (5).dmg
Flash Installer (6).dmg
Flash Installer (7).dmg
Flash Installer (8).dmg
Flash Installer (9).dmg
Flash Installer (10).dmg
Flash Installer (11).dmg

etc.

All of them are certainly malware, but the malware creators overestimated my parents' ability to perform even the simplest tasks, like installing a program.
     
P
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Jul 6, 2020, 11:51 AM
 
Originally Posted by subego View Post
How much Flash needs to die can’t be expressed with words.
Less than six months left now.
The new Mac Pro has up to 30 MB of cache inside the processor itself. That's more than the HD in my first Mac. Somehow I'm still running out of space.
     
Thorzdad  (op)
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Jul 6, 2020, 01:36 PM
 
Originally Posted by P View Post
Less than six months left now.
I saw an odd statement from Adobe a month or so back that seemed to say that everyone’s Flash player is somehow going to be bricked. Is that right?
     
Waragainstsleep
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Jul 6, 2020, 03:45 PM
 
Originally Posted by Laminar View Post
My parents' Downloads folder is basically:

Flash Installer.dmg
Flash Installer (1).dmg
Flash Installer (2).dmg
Flash Installer (3).dmg
Flash Installer (4).dmg
Flash Installer (5).dmg
Flash Installer (6).dmg
Flash Installer (7).dmg
Flash Installer (8).dmg
Flash Installer (9).dmg
Flash Installer (10).dmg
Flash Installer (11).dmg

etc.

All of them are certainly malware, but the malware creators overestimated my parents' ability to perform even the simplest tasks, like installing a program.
I see this a lot.
I have plenty of more important things to do, if only I could bring myself to do them....
     
P
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Jul 6, 2020, 07:12 PM
 
Originally Posted by Thorzdad View Post
I saw an odd statement from Adobe a month or so back that seemed to say that everyone’s Flash player is somehow going to be bricked. Is that right?
Adobe will stop supporting it and will stop distributing it. The various browsers will treat that in different ways. MS and Google have said that they will remove it from their browsers by that date. Firefox seems to be doing the same thing, with a tiny asterix for the long term support versions. Apple has required explicit enabling of Flash for years - I don’t know if they have said that they will absolutely remove it by that date, but it seems highly likely.
The new Mac Pro has up to 30 MB of cache inside the processor itself. That's more than the HD in my first Mac. Somehow I'm still running out of space.
     
ghporter
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Jul 11, 2020, 02:50 PM
 
Flash (or “Flash”) is only one of the typical vectors. It’s important to be VERY suspicious of anything that wants you to install it. As of my incident above, I’m going to “just say no” to anything that I didn’t specifically seek out.

But... How many people say “my Mac is always safe, so what could go wrong?” Yeah, plenty of them.

Sadly, we need to start making Mac users as suspicious as Windows users should be. Which sucks...

Glenn -----OTR/L, MOT, Tx
     
   
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