It was a reminder, however, that companies like these are still out there working hard to undermine the security of your Mac. Known as Crisis or Morcut, the malware did not pose a significant threat and was easily removed from an infected system. This not only showed that Hacking Team was still in business, despite their not so great year in 2015, but also that new malware delivery mechanisms were under development. In March, a new version of Hacking Team’s Remote Control System was uncovered. At the time of testing, these servers appeared to be offline, most likely discontinued after the first report of OceanLotus by researchers at Qihoo 360.
ZIPCLOUD SERVICE START BLOCKED UPDATE
Using a fake Flash Player update and spread through watering holes and spear-phishing, the malware installed a LaunchAgent on infected systems and awaited instructions from a command-and-control server.
ZIPCLOUD SERVICE START BLOCKED MAC
Initially discovered in 2015, the Mac version of this malware did not get any stage time until February 2016. Shortly after InstallCore made its rounds, OS X malware identified as OceanLotus made the spotlight. In fact, one of the most well known scareware campaigns targeting Macs is still Mac Defender, discovered by Intego nearly 5 years ago. Scareware is a very effective method of getting to a user’s wallet or potentially cause a malware infection. The year in malware was kicked off early in 2016 by the discovery of InstallCore, a fake Flash Player update that, once installed, used scare tactics to try and get money out of users to fix various system problems. Read on to discover the worst Mac threats in 2016, along with some of Apple’s more notable security improvements over the year.
This article is a summary of the year’s security issues that affected Macs. What’s changed since our previous installment on the state of Mac security at the beginning of 2016? Truth be told, 2016 was a busy year. On the contrary, there was some good news as Apple’s release of macOS Sierra implemented several new security features and plugged security holes. Some people get infected by malware, other people avoid it. Some of the bad news was just the reality of being a computer user in today’s digital world, including new threats targeting Macs, malware infections, fresh vulnerabilities in third-party software, plug-in security issues, and data breaches. And for Mac users, there were plenty of bad things that happened in 2016 related to security threats, but also some good things that happened on the privacy front. Apple + Intego + Recommended + Security & Privacy The Year in Mac Security 2016Īs we enter 2017, we all tend to look back on the good and the bad experienced during another trip around the sun.