Small Town Geeks

For years Mac has been quote “Virus Free”. With the popularity growing for the platform there will inevitably be more and more attacks launched on the Unix based operating system. Today while browsing hotels.com for a last minute vacation, I was presented with a screen that was surprisingly familiar from the days of using Windows.

Usually when sites come up they have the “XP” look to them because they are targeting Windows. This however looks very legit. You can see the familiar finder look on the left side where it is finding all of the infections. You can also see where it opened the download box to download the “Apple Security Center”. I downloaded the the software (knowing it was a virus but I wanted to test it out) to see if it was like popups in the passed where it would download an “.exe” or an “.msi” but it was indeed a package.

I will have to give them credit, the software looks legit. The software even includes Growl notifications and a shield that tells you that it is scanning.

I have a feeling that many people will fall for this scareware and give this company lots of money. I will say that it was however really easy to get rid of the Virus unlike the many Windows machines that I worked on in the Geeksquad. Please inform your users and your friends of this recent outbreak so you don’t end up doing cleanup on their machines.

Until next time.

Carpe Noctum

TJ