Segura also outlines how to get rid of the ransomware message by clicking on the Safari menu and going to the Reset Safari option. The victim will feel they may have actually being doing something wrong and got caught and ashamed, will pay the 'fine.'' 'The bad guys know how to use social engineering to entice victims as, for example, I was lead to this locked page by doing a search for Taylor Swift on Bing images.

Jerome Segura, senior security researcher at Malwarebytes said: The only way to close the page is to 'force quit' but the cyber-criminals take advantage of the 'restore from crash' feature of the browser and when you restart Safari the message appears again. If you try to simply close the page however, you will find you can't, getting the pop-up message below. The cyber-criminals have even gone so far as to use a URL which looks real (). 'You have been viewing or distributing prohibited Pornographic content (Child porno photos and etc were found).To unlock your computer and to avoid other legal consequences, you are obligated to pay a release fee of $300.' The message which shows up claims to be from the Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI) and reads:

The ransomware page is pushed onto unsuspecting users browsing regular websites, but in particular when searching for certain, popular keywords. Security firm Malwarebytes uncovered the ransomware which is affecting Apple's Safari browser. Ransomware like this has been prevalent on Windows-based PCs for many years, but with the increase in popularity of Apple's computers - in particular its range of laptops - cyber-criminals are keen to exploit this as-yet-untapped source of income.

The message (seen above) claims to be from the FBI and but in reality is from cyber-criminals hoping users will simply pay the release fee in order to avoid the potential embarrassment of reporting the message to their internet provider or the authorities. The website purporting to be from the FBI which accuses users of having child porn images on their computers and demands a $300 release fee (Credit: Malwarebytes)

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