FBI Ransomware Tries To Shame Mac Users Into Paying $300

Let’s face it, there are probably a good many of us out there who download music or movies illegally, and those of us underage who click “Yes I Am Over 18” when viewing adult websites: basically things we’re not supposed to be doing. However what would you do if you were caught? Well it seems that there is a browser trojan making its way around the internet infecting Mac computers, and it is essentially a new version of the FBI Ransomeware. What the trojan does is that it makes the user believe that they have been caught doing something illegal or shameful, such as surfing porn or downloading pirated content, and to unlock their Mac computer, they would have to pay a $300 “fine”.

According to security expert Jerome Segura who spoke to the folks at Venture Beat, “The bad guys know how to use social engineering to entice victims as, for example, I was led to this locked page by doing a search for Taylor Swift nude on Bing images […] The victim will feel they may have actually being doing something wrong and got caught and ashamed will pay the ‘fine.’” As it stands, Apple’s Safari browser is the one that is most vulnerable to the trojan, and Segura claims that using Google Chrome should be a safer choice. It seems that once you’re infected it’s not that easy to get rid of it, and your options include resetting Safari completely, ultimately wiping out all your saved data, or quit using the browser and use an alternative like Chrome or Firefox instead.

Tyler Lee
Categories: Computers
Tags: Mac (Apple), virus