Who said Macs are not vulnerable to security attacks?  Nobody recently that’s for certain, it is true however that incidents of such attacks are far less frequent that those of us running Windows based machines.

However, I thought I would relate this recent experience:  A friend showed me her iMac Safari problem.

“Every time I click on this hyperlink, a new tab opens trying to sell me software” she said.

And sure enough, doing a search engine search and clicking on one of the resultant links not only opens the expected window, but gives focus to an unwanted tab trying to flog security orientated software.  The kind of thing we see all the time on Windows based boxes.   It does not seem to vicious in its intent, just extremely annoying.

Trying to investigate the issue online with only Safari to work with becomes a chore.  Particularly – as I soon found out – when it becomes clear this clever piece of malware hides the one page I have found that helped from the machines browser.

It was not until later on searching using another device that I found the following link:

Https://discussions.apple.com/thread/6531026

This link features the steps required to remove the malware.  This involves removing certain installed services , files and extensions (as needed).  It works perfectly but does highlight an issue Apple need to address.

Yes this particular user has had their machine infected from a site offering streaming of [illegal] media, in this case Megashare.  However, as is pointed out on the helpful page, you cannot rely on the OS X Gatekeeper functionality to warn you of the malwares installation.  In this case the developer has a valid codesigning certificate issued by Apple, meaning the software is installed without vetting by Gatekeeper.  Nice.

Be careful out there.