Apple Has Shut Down the First Fully-Functional Mac OS X Ransomware (techcrunch.com)

An anonymous reader writes: Apple has shut down what appears to have been the first, fully-functional ransomware targeting Mac computers. This particular form of cyber threat involves malware that encrypts the data on your personal computer so you can no longer access it. Afterwards, the hackers request that you pay them in a hard-to-trace digital currency — in this case, bitcoin — in order for you to retrieve your files. This ransomware, called KeRanger, was first reported by researchers at Palo Alto Networks. They also noted that Apple has now revoked the abused certificate that was used in the attack and updated its built-in anti-malware system XProtect with a new signature to protect customers.

Comments

so much for the walled garden

[Anonymous Coward]

I thought certs where going to protect us from this mess. It is nice that Apple yanked this cert, but what is to stop another cert from being bought and used to do the same damn thing?

Re:so much for the walled garden

[Anonymous Coward]

Agreed and it's one of the major reasons I switched from Microsoft Windows. There's far, far fewer attack vectors with Apple because it's basically unix underneath and they have a paywall for developer certs. And when there is a problem you don't have to have your systems exposed to attack until patch tuesday rolls around (that's if Microsoft ever releases one).

Kudos to Apple, 24 hours and poof, the problem was mitigated. Microsoft should adopt the same model.but it would require a herculean effort to get their products up to the same standard of quality.

Apple can't have any any one cutting in to there b

[mmiscool]

Apple can't have any one else cutting in to there business.