Apple Officially Responds to Mac-targeting Rogue MacDefender
Earlier this month Intego uncovered that a rogue is making the rounds online and it’s targeting Mac users. The rogue in question hid under various names, like MacDefender, MacSecurity and MacProtector. Once installed on a machine, it would attempt to trick the user into thinking his machine is infected – just like rogues always do.
The MacDefender rogue spread to more and more users, causing call volumes at AppleCare to increase 4 to 5 times. Intego itself said that it was contacted by a “huge number of customers who are worried about this fake antivirus”. Intego customers had nothing to worry about since VirusBarrier X5 and VirusBarrier X6, as well as VirusBarrier Express and VirusBarrier Plus could protect against the MacDefender threat.
That’s the story so far. The news is that Apple has officially responded to the MacDefender threat and posted an online support document that explains how to avoid the rogue and how to remove the rogue. In the same document Apple explains that in the near future it will release a security update that will do two things:
1. It will present the user with an explicit warning if he tries to download the MacDefender rogue or any of its variants.
2. The update will automatically find and it will automatically remove the MacDefender rogue and its variants from compromised machines.
I mentioned above that the rogue spread to more and more Macs. We don’t have any official numbers to present and better put things in perspective. But according to ZDNet’s Ed Bott, the numbers could be pretty high. “I’m told that the division that handles Mac support calls receives between 10,000 and 20,000 calls a day. If 25% of those calls are related to this issue, which has been going on for 25 days, the total number of customers affected could be between 60,000 and 125,000, and growing,” said Ed Bott.
Tags: Intego, Security, Fake AV, Rogue, MacDefender, Apple
The MacDefender rogue spread to more and more users, causing call volumes at AppleCare to increase 4 to 5 times. Intego itself said that it was contacted by a “huge number of customers who are worried about this fake antivirus”. Intego customers had nothing to worry about since VirusBarrier X5 and VirusBarrier X6, as well as VirusBarrier Express and VirusBarrier Plus could protect against the MacDefender threat.
Advertising
That’s the story so far. The news is that Apple has officially responded to the MacDefender threat and posted an online support document that explains how to avoid the rogue and how to remove the rogue. In the same document Apple explains that in the near future it will release a security update that will do two things:
1. It will present the user with an explicit warning if he tries to download the MacDefender rogue or any of its variants.
2. The update will automatically find and it will automatically remove the MacDefender rogue and its variants from compromised machines.
I mentioned above that the rogue spread to more and more Macs. We don’t have any official numbers to present and better put things in perspective. But according to ZDNet’s Ed Bott, the numbers could be pretty high. “I’m told that the division that handles Mac support calls receives between 10,000 and 20,000 calls a day. If 25% of those calls are related to this issue, which has been going on for 25 days, the total number of customers affected could be between 60,000 and 125,000, and growing,” said Ed Bott.
Tags: Intego, Security, Fake AV, Rogue, MacDefender, Apple
I Hope you LIKE this blog post! Thank you!
What do YOU have to say about this
blog comments powered by Disqus
Popular News
By George Norman on 17 May 2013
This week the Linux Mint team announced that they pushed out the Release Candidate (RC) of Linux Mint 15 codename Olivia. This is the most ambitious release since the start of the Linux Mint project.
By George Norman on 16 May 2013
Bromium, nexB and ownCloud are the newest members of The Linux Foundation. Pushed by the fact that the use of Linux in enterprise keeps growing, these companies decided to embrace collaborative development.Related News
By George Norman on 23 Nov 2012
Security company Intego announced that it is offering a 30% discount to anyone who uses a special Black Friday coupon code to purchase its products. Hurry, this is a time limited offer!
By George Norman on 08 Jan 2013
On Monday, Apple was glad to announce that more than 40 million downloads from its App Store have been recorded. About half of that, about 20 billion downloads were recorded in 2012 alone.
By George Norman on 31 Jan 2013
Apple announced the release of a new 4th generation iPad model that has a storage capacity of 128GB. That is twice the storage capacity you can use to enjoy all sorts of content 
By George Norman on 17 Dec 2012
On the 14th of December the iPhone 5 became available for purchase in China. Three days later Apple announced that it sold more than 2 million devices.Advertising
Hot Software Updates
Top Downloads
2.
Opera5.
Trillian8.
AIM9.
Skype10.
Ad-Aware12.
Nero13.
Google Earth14.
Picasa15.
Winamp16.
iTunes17.
RealPlayer18.
uTorrent19.
eMule20.
WinRAR21.
BitComet22.
WinZip23.
Shareaza24.
CCleaner25.
Recuva26.
Tweak UI27.
CuteFTP29.
Adobe Reader30.
NewsPiperBecome A Fan!
Link To Us!
Apple Officially Responds to Mac-targeting Rogue MacDefender
HTML Linking Code
HTML Linking Code