Apple Suffers First Ransomware Attack On Mac

Apple Inc. users may have suffered a cyberattack through a downloading software on the Mac over the weekend, in what security researchers at Palo Alto Networks are calling the first known ransomware attack against the company. The malicious actors gained access through the open-source Transmission BitTorrent installer on OS X, which enables people to download large swaths of software. Apple has revoked the abused certificate and updated its XProtect antivirus software, while Transmission Project has removed the malicious installers from its website. Ransomware is a type of cyberattack in which malicious actors encrypt data on targeted machines then require users to pay a ransom - usually a monetary sum in the form of a hard-to-trace currency - to retrieve their data.

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