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KeRanger the Latest Ransomware for Mac PCs


Apple-users worldwide are in a state of anxiety ever-since they heard of a cyber assault targeting Mac PCs in a ransomware campaign that blocks user's access to his affected PC till the time the now user turned victim makes a monetary payment to get it unlocked. The ransom software, which security investigators from Palo Alto Networks discovered, is dubbed "KeRanger" a hitherto non-existent virus devoid of similarity with any other ransomware.

Fortunately, says the Transmission group, ever-since they encountered a hack into their website till the time they detected KeRanger contamination, merely some 6,500 end-users took down the contaminated binaries online.

Transmission 2.90 was the moniker of the contaminated edition. Credit goes to Palo Alto Networks that fast identified and dissolved the binaries. Apple too responded quickly via releasing several updates that revised the company's XProtect anti-malware package thus enabling Mac end-users to be safeguarded from the ransomware that eventually became innocuous.

The Transmission venture fast provided their Mac platform's sanitized edition namely version 2.91 followed with version 2.92 issued yesterday that contains an incorporated KeRanger remover. Softpedia.com posted this, March 8, 2016.

End-users after loading Transmission 2.90, though for 3-days enjoyed torrented goodness, thereafter received an offensive ransom note in mid-afternoon around 2 p.m. In the East, KeRanger encrypted data files on the Mac computers while asked their owners to pay 1 Bitcoin (USD409) for decrypting the same. Moreover, with more than three hundred separate file extension kinds encoded, only a few were spared.

Considering that ransomware attacks normally victimize several thousand Windows systems every week, while a few crime syndicates reap multi-millions via ransomware bounties annually, it appears a highly insignificant measure of the KeRanger infections in comparison with what is actually happening within the underground cyber world.

And because KeRanger would become active and encrypt data-folders solely after 3-days, the swift responses of Palo Alto and Apple let numerous end-users to remain out of the situation thus making a far lesser count of the total KeRanger infections.

Apple's response was in eliminating the installer's particular certification edition which let the ransom software to evade XProtect and GateKeeper, the Macs' usually severe security solutions.

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