The Mac Man

In the last couple of days we have had a lot of customers complaining about so called viruses that have been discovered on their Macs.

We looked in to the problem to discover a fake application called MacSecurity or MacProtector MacDefender that alerts the user to the fact (or not) that their Mac is riddled with viruses. It then offers to clean your Mac up once you have paid for the full application which requires registration.

The problem starts out when you visit certain websites that are artificially getting high rankings on search engines. You click on the link and you are taken to a site which displays a webpage that looks almost identical to a Windows and now Mac operating system window.

Whilst this window appears, java script automatically downloads the malware to your Mac. The malware is a compressed file and is currently called Macprotector.mpkg. If you have the option to open safe files enabled in Safari, the programme will run and you will see a typical installer window. For this application to install you have to instigate the installation by typing in your admin password.

We suggest that you always turn off the "open safe files" option in safari. Go to Safari>preferences and then un tick the "open safe files after downloading" option.

If you enter your admin password then the application will install. Once installed the application will alert you to the fact or not that your Mac is infected with many viruses and it will offer to clean these from your Mac. If you try to clean them from your Mac the software directs you to a purchase window. It asks for you credit/debit card details which will register the software and charge your card.

Once registered the software will stop displaying the virus alerts making you think that it has done its job and cleaned the viruses from your Mac. We suspect overtime the makers will alert you to other fictions virus alerts that will more than likely require an update which you may be charged for.

On top of all this the software will also open and redirect your default web browser to adult porn and viagra sites.

To remove the virus all you need to do is trash the application which will be called one of the following. MacProtector, MacDefender or MacSecurity.

We would also suggest downloading a legitimate free anti virus application. We recommend Sophos for Mac. You can download the software here.

If in doubt then give us a shout and we can sort this nasty for you.