Transmission BitTorrent App Contained Malware (cnbc.com)

Posted by BeauHD on Sunday March 6, 2016 @12:28PM from the late-to-the-party dept.

An anonymous reader writes: Apple users were targeted in the first known Mac ransomware campaign. Hackers targeted Transmission, which is one of the most popular Mac applications used to download software, videos, music, and other data from the BitTorrent peer-to-peer information sharing network. As per this forum post (English screenshot of warning), OS X detected malware called OSX.KeRanger.A. This is the first one in the wild that is functional as it encrypts your files and seeks a ransom. An Apple representative said the company had taken steps over the weekend to prevent attacks by revoking a digital certificate from a legitimate Apple developer that enabled the rogue software to install on Macs.

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Re:If I remember right transmission is also includ by NotInHere · 2016-03-06 12:53 · Score: 0, Flamebait

I think that version is safe. My guess at the core of the whole story is that transmission wanted to provide binaries for mac, and they asked someone external to the project to do it, because neither of them had a mac nor wanted to afford $100 in order to build software for free, and that person was malicious and included the ransomware.
I guess that that made enough money to compensate for the Mac purchase and the 100$ developer fee. One can even say that in this case, apple made money with malware.