“The recent news that the popular torrenting app Transmission had been compromised to include ransomware shocked many OS X users,” Jim Lynch writes for CIO. “This is one of the first times that OS X has been directly targeted for such a malware attack.”
“And it has some OS X users, myself included, wondering if it might be a better idea to stick with the Mac App Store instead of downloading software from third party Web sites,” Lynch writes. “I know that a lot of people are down on the Mac App Store, and some developers have even removed their software for one reason or another. But I still think it can be quite useful and I’ve tried to get most of my software there for the last few years.”
“However, until the Transmission ransomware, I didn’t think twice about installing software from outside of the Mac App Store. But those days are over,” Lynch writes. “After I did my clean install of OS X El Capitan, I changed my security settings to allow app installs only from the Mac App Store.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Great in theory until you need software that’s not available via the Mac App Store (which is all too often the case).
For Transmission users only:
Transmission’s website (https://www.transmissionbt.com) states:
Everyone running 2.90 on OS X should immediately upgrade to and run 2.92, as they may have downloaded a malware-infected file. This new version will make sure that the “OSX.KeRanger.A” ransomware (more information available here) is correctly removed from your computer.
Users of 2.91 should also immediately upgrade to and run 2.92. Even though 2.91 was never infected, it did not automatically remove the malware-infected file.
SEE ALSO:
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