Raid on Russian Firm May Have Taken Down MacDefender Malware

[smithrh]

The credit card companies don't care about stopping thieves. I'm betting they do the cost analysis and decide it's too expensive to go after them and it's cheaper just to let them get money.

I can confirm that you are, sadly, correct.

 

[*LTD*]

So now we're back down to 2.

Yep, 2 neg ratings for that. LOL

I love your neg ratings guys. I feed off your tears, sense of entitlement, and utter frustration that OS X somehow, miraculously, after nearly a decade, still has fewer threats against it than you've got fingers on your one hand (yeah, the one you type with on your $400 hackintosh.) The nerd-rage against Apple is beautiful. Keep em coming.

Yeah, it really sucks that there are like no threats for OS X. Gotta be a negative.

 

[adder7712]

Haha, hopefully this will be a slap to the face to Windows fanboys that utters "lololol mac rogue hahaha mac suxxx".

 

[GGJstudios]

Yep, 2 neg ratings for that. LOL

I love your neg ratings guys.

What neg ratings are you talking about?

I feed off your tears, sense of entitlement, and utter frustration that OS X somehow, miraculously, after nearly a decade, still has fewer threats against it than you've got fingers on your one hand (yeah, the one you type with on your $400 hackintosh.) The nerd-rage against Apple is beautiful. Keep em coming.

What on earth are you talking about? And who are you talking to?

Yeah, it really sucks that there are like no threats for OS X. Gotta be a negative.

There are a handful of threats, all trojans, not zero. I don't know where you're getting your information, but it's wrong.

 

[mark28]

All companies lie to take your money? What makes them any different.

 

[METOO999]

Thank god Vladimir Poutine was infected unless this would have never happened 😛

Now you're making me hungry for poutine. 😉

 

[Sankersizzle]

Yep, 2 neg ratings for that. LOL

I love your neg ratings guys. I feed off your tears, sense of entitlement, and utter frustration that OS X somehow, miraculously, after nearly a decade, still has fewer threats against it than you've got fingers on your one hand (yeah, the one you type with on your $400 hackintosh.) The nerd-rage against Apple is beautiful. Keep em coming.

Yeah, it really sucks that there are like no threats for OS X. Gotta be a negative.

I have read this entire thread and I have no idea what the dicks you are talking about. I think you might need to stop and take a second for your brain, friend.

 

[wackymacky]

THROW AWAY THE KEY... or shoot them.

Cut off his balls I say.

This is good news. MacDefender got my Dad. He, like many Mac users infected with the malware, is one of those people that clicks "okay" to anything just to get the windows to go away.

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; CPU iPhone OS 5_0 like Mac OS X) AppleWebKit/534.46 (KHTML, like Gecko) Mobile/9A5274d)

Maybe I'm being too harsh, but anyone that falls for the old "YOU HAVE VIRUSES!!! Give us your credit card number and we'll get rid of them!" trick deserves what they get.

No, they don't deserve what they get. Yes some people are stupid, but others are just naive. Like when the mechanic calls while servicing the car to say that there's arching on the distributor cap or the oxygen sensor is faulty and needs replacing for $250, 90% of people do not have the skill to know what to do.

I must say though that I have laughed my arse off a couple of times when I have gotten a phone call 6pm on a Saturday night from someone with an Pakistani accent who says "I am calling from Microsoft Security Centre, We have detected that you have a virus on your computer. This is a most urgent matter and you must go to www.whatever ASAP."

("umm I actually have only run OSX (apart from a work lap top) at home for the last 20 years you fool" I want to shout.)

 

[mdgm]

I'm pretty sure I've seen a popup asking me to install the MacDefender malware very recently which would be well after the supposed date this was taken down.

 

[Stridder44]

Why am I not surprised.

 

[Apple OC]

If true and if they are guilty I hope the russian Justice system and the russian jails live up to their image.

Again, if they are guilty I hope they rot in a jail in northern siberia for the next 25 years...

Don't count on it ... they may end up with jobs at the Kremlin

 

[msandersen]

Yep, nowhere near as bad as the Russian virus the KGB administered from the top of a brolly! 😱

It was the Romanian secret police, and poison administered by a small pellet from an umbrella tip to kill a dissident. Presumably they used KGB technology.

I'm pretty sure I've seen a popup asking me to install the MacDefender malware very recently which would be well after the supposed date this was taken down.

It can still be distributed by affiliates, but without the credit card processing, they won't get paid. No doubt numerous websites have been hacked to serve up various fake AVs via cross-site scripting etc, and might be active some time after the network is taken down, assuming they use hacked servers to serve up content.

In my experience, banks/credit card companies don't give one ***** about theft. They make more money by worrying about getting you to spend more (which also involves not hassling anyone who is using the card. It's why they want you to sign for charges rather than enter a pin. Entering a pin might cause some people not to use the card cause it's too inconvenient though entering a pin is far more secure than just putting a signature down).

Increasingly, they don't even ask for a pin or signature for relatively small amounts; and they are pushing for even more "convenient" methods using near-field communication to put in phones. Lose your phone, you not only lose your personal info to steal your ID to rake up debt, you can lose all the money from your own account too. Great.

 

[-tWv-]

Good news

 

[Rot'nApple]

Then, one day, MacDefender simply disappeared.

ChronoPay's offices are raided June 23.

Seal Team Six?!

Nah...

"Steve Deep Six!" 😀
/
/
/

 

[arkmannj]

To the general public anything bad that gets on your computer is a virus. You can argue semantics and terminology all you want but almost everybody will call it a virus no matter what. It doesn't matter to John Doe if he installed it himself by entering his password, he will blame the computer. The term has made it into the lexicon of the massess. You can't change it.

yup.. kinda like "hacker" and "cracker" , etc...

 

[mcmlxix]

I said it before...follow the money and find the perpetrator.

 

[powers74]

Interesting

Cause I just had this happen to me today...

And also I have quadruplicate emails going back to when I opened the iTunes account for that email (not the Russian email account which I have no clue what it is). Hope it's not serious.


Any thoughts?

 

[santaliqueur]

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; CPU iPhone OS 5_0 like Mac OS X) AppleWebKit/534.46 (KHTML, like Gecko) Mobile/9A5274d)

Maybe I'm being too harsh, but anyone that falls for the old "YOU HAVE VIRUSES!!! Give us your credit card number and we'll get rid of them!" trick deserves what they get.

Maybe you weren't thinking of the guys who screwed with peoples lives. They are the ones who deserve what they get. Why does everyone seem to forget about the CRIMINALS anymore?

If I forget to lock my house, and if scumbags break into it and set it on fire, I deserve it? Is that much different than your logic?

 

[MegaSignal]

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; CPU iPhone OS 5_0 like Mac OS X) AppleWebKit/534.46 (KHTML, like Gecko) Mobile/9A5274d)

Maybe I'm being too harsh, but anyone that falls for the old "YOU HAVE VIRUSES!!! Give us your credit card number and we'll get rid of them!" trick deserves what they get.

The whole point of Mac vs PC was that. . .

. . .oh, never mind, never mind!

 

[Aduntu]

It's very important when it comes to defending against them.

Who said otherwise? I didn't. Arguing whether it's a trojan or a virus is completely pointless. The differences aren't important to people who just don't want something to be there.

Wrong.



Right.

Defending against a trojan is always going to be a reactionary measure. Unless you prevent installation of software on the machine from Web downloads or from nefarious media (Mac App Store?) you can only stop a trojan after it has struck at least one user. Essentially, a trojan can be written for your system no matter how secure it is.

However, a virus exploits known security flaws in your system and typically replicates itself and tries to move on to other machines as well. The maker of the operating system is directly responsible for letting the virus on to the computer.

Are Macs virus free because Apple writes better software? Certainly the exploit used for JailBreakMe.com could have been used for a virus to gain access to the machine. New security measures in Lion like sand-boxing the PDF viewer/parser or the video decoders are going to go a long way to stopping exploits like that.

But the only security measure that Mac OS X can add to stop a Trojan is to require all application installations to go through the Mac App Store unless you go through some sort of questionnaire that first verifies that you are in fact savvy enough to know what it is you are installing.

Who are you trying to educate? Your regurgitation of other's ideas isn't helping anyone. The people who care about the differences know the differences.

 

[GGJstudios]

Who said otherwise? I didn't. Arguing whether it's a trojan or a virus is completely pointless. The differences aren't important to people who just don't want something to be there.

It's not about arguing semantics. The difference is important to those who "just don't want something to be there" whether they know it or not, because the difference affects their course of action in defending themselves.

The people who care about the differences know the differences.

No, they don't. Most of the people who want to be protected from malware don't know the differences at all. They would benefit by understanding the difference, knowing what course of action is required to protect themselves. That's why education is important. People come here, looking for answers. Rather than accept the fact that people are uninformed, it's far more constructive and helpful to inform them.

 

[GonzagaDynasty]

Not a lot of good comes from Russia.

 

[charlituna]

If this is the worst "threat" Mac users see then I find that pretty funny 😉. I mean it doesn't do anything. Well, other than some small pop ups and asks for your credit card? Really? That is considered a "major threat..." 🙂

Unless it slows down or crashes your computer (ahem Windows Super Antivirus 2009 (10, 11, etc) then its just annoying. Nice that its gone though 😀

You wouldn't it find it merely annoying if you were one of the victims and your bank account was emptied cause you put in your debit card.

A lot of older folks get hit with this kind of stuff because they are simply too naive about computers to have the instincts to say "but I never installed an anti-virus scanner so how does it know I have a virus"

Also I wouldn't be surprised if the takedown actually had nothing to do with the virus but was about something else and it was just dumb luck it was the same folks

 

[JAT]

What neg ratings are you talking about?

What on earth are you talking about? And who are you talking to?

There are a handful of threats, all trojans, not zero. I don't know where you're getting your information, but it's wrong.

You seriously don't know about the rating system? Look at the bottom of every post. Unless you only visit via phone...

 

[GGJstudios]

You seriously don't know about the rating system? Look at the bottom of every post. Unless you only visit via phone...

Oh, THOSE ratings! Who cares about those? They're meaningless.