Reply #8: New Mac fake-defenders similar to Windows scareware

[steve2470]

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/05/20/mac_scareware_win_rogue_similarities/

Researchers at Microsoft have discovered striking similarities between the recently emerged wave of scareware packages targeting Mac fans and the longer established rogue anti-virus applications for Windows.

MacDefender falsely warns that Mac OS X machines are infected with malware in a bid to trick prospective marks into buying a supposed security package that actually does more harm than good. Like its Windows cousin, the scam starts after users are tricked – via search engine manipulation and other ruses – into visiting an imitation scanner interface.

But the similarities between MacDefender (dubbed FakeMacdef) and Winwebsec, a strain of scareware for Windows machines, go far deeper than that.

For one thing, the URL format that FakeMacdef calls home is almost identical to that which we see in Winwebsec. In additional, the purchase pages use the same payment gateway. Finally, as a blog post by Microsoft illustrates, the interfaces on both products are almost the same.