Sunday, March 6, 2016

Ransomware on Mac

Security has been a very important thing to Apple... obviously. However, a Transmission update over the weekend had the potential of downloading ransomware onto a Mac. Transmission is a BitTorrent client. Depending on several factors, legality of BitTorrent varies. In general, it's best to stay away from it. And this just proves that. Transmission pushed an update that seems to have a chance to infect your computer with ransomware. Ransomware essentially takes your data, locks it up, and holds it hostage until you pay up. If you don't, sometimes it may delete your data. If you do, it might not actually restore your data. This is definitely something you want to get involved in. If you have Transmission installed, they recommend that you do the following:
"Everyone running 2.90 on OS X should immediately upgrade to 2.91 or delete their copy of 2.90, as they may have downloaded a malware-infected file. 
Using 'Activity Monitor' preinstalled in OS X, check whether any process named 'kernel_service' is running. If so, double check the process, choose the 'Open Files and Ports' and check whether there is a file name like '/Users//Library/kernel_service'. If so, the process is KeRanger’s main process. We suggest terminating it with 'Quit -> Force Quit'".

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