“Ransomware has become the scourge of the web in recent months,” Thomas Fox-Brewster reports for Forbes. “But if you own an Apple AAPL +0.57% Mac, there’s much less chance of your PC being infected with ransomware than if you’re a Microsoft MSFT -0.71% user. Only one fully-functional sample has ever been seen — KeRanger, which infected under 7,000 Apple machines.”
“Not only are there only a handful of examples, two of which were developed as research projects rather than genuine cybercriminal tools, but one professional hacker has developed a tool he believes will successfully prevent any current forms of ransomware infecting Mac OS X,” Fox-Brewster reports. “And he believes that as long as criminals aren’t able to hack his tool, future forms of ransomware should be killed before they even have a chance to make a mockery of Apple security.”
“Patrick Wardle, a former NSA staffer who now heads research at bug hunting outfit Synack, created the software, ‘RansomWhere?,’ after researching those few examples of Apple Mac ransomware and determining that anti-virus wasn’t up to snuff when it came to this insidious form of malware,” Fox-Brewster reports. “Wardle admits his tool isn’t perfect and could be circumvented by hackers who can detect RansomWhere? running on a Mac, removing its capabilities or finding a way to avoid detection. Files outside of a users’ home directory are not protected by the tool. Ransomware could, therefore, shift files outside that directory and lock them up. And, as RansomWhere? trusts all Apple-signed files as well as apps already installed on a Mac, it wouldn’t be able to help if the malware can abuse them. ‘I’m hoping all the ransomware authors are high and overlook this [release],’ said Wardle.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Not high enough, it would seem. It’s already been circumvented with just 10 lines of code. See the full article.
SEE ALSO:
Good news and bad news as ransomware comes to the Mac – March 17, 2016
Mac ransomware ‘KeRanger’ was ported from Linux, affected less than 7,000 users – March 9, 2016
Mac ransomware attack casts light on a booming shadow industry – March 8, 2016
Why you should stick with the Mac App Store for safer OS X software downloads – March 8, 2016
7 steps to protect yourself from over-hyped Mac ‘ransomware’ threat – March 7, 2016
Mac users targeted in first known OS X ransomware scam – March 6, 2016
Sounds about useless, after all the things it won’t do.