Are Macs at risk of ransomware?

[freeradical]

Federal agents over the weekend secretly seized control of two computer networks that hackers used to steal millions of dollars from unsuspecting victims. In doing so, the Justice Department disrupted the circulation of two of the world’s most pernicious viruses and turned a 30-year-old Russian computer hacker into a most-wanted fugitive.

[Acer]

all your base are belong to us

[ztirffritz]

Are Macs at risk? Sure. Has the risk been widely exploited? Not yet. I read about some people in Australia that had their iOS devices taken hostage by hackers who cracked their AppleID Password and locked the phone.

[bhaveshp]

I've glad they got control of the botnets, though I wonder if this will help people from still being infected.

My father-in-law got hit by the nasty Cryptolocker trojan on his ancient Windows Vista laptop, despite being up-to-date with Microsoft Security Essentials.

Apparently he fell victim to a link from a spam email. I've been trying to get him to switch away from his 15 year old, spam filled AOL account. But it is is long time business email, and he won't.

I took his Windows machine hostage and he got a Macbook Air. I'm certainly hoping Macs aren't hit, though of course they've got plenty of security holes as well.

[chopper]

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I'm sure he will have less problems on a Mac.

[Speedy]

ztirffritz wrote: hackers who cracked their AppleID Password and locked the phone.

Not exactly. eBay was hacked. The people who were locked out of their iOS devices used the same password for their device that they used for eBay (as well as the email they used for eBay.)