Got adware problems? Blame free software download sites

February 24, 2015

Mac adware is bad. Windows is worse. Who's to blame? Free software download sites.

Weren't we just talking about how to get rid of Mac adware? This is a real and malevolent threat on the Mac. We have it easy compared to our Windows using colleagues with horrors like Superfish.

InfoSec Taylor Swift on Twitter recently made me aware of a feature on How-To Geek that explains what's going on with popular PC download sites like CNET Downloads.

As we've shown before, if you make the huge gigantic mistake of trusting CNET Downloads, you could already be infected with this type of adware. Two of the top ten downloads on CNET (KMPlayer and YTD) are bundling two different types of HTTPS-hijacking adware, and in our research we found that most other freeware sites are doing the same thing.

Reagan had the old Russian proverb right: Trust, but verify. Gatekeeper makes this much easier to deal with on the Mac by preventing you from running apps that don't come from signed Apple developers. Advantage: Mac. If you want to stay even safer, just buy apps from the Mac App Store. If you're not careful, it's really easy to catch an adware injection from sites where you might not expect it.

Unless you do something stupid like pirate Mac apps, that is. In which case you deserves what happens to you, jerk.