There are numerous facets and shades of Mac adware. Some of these junk apps fully live up to their categorization, displaying ads on most web pages the victim visits. Others use a different tactic that involves an unauthorized overhaul of one’s browser settings to reroute the traffic. The Bing redirect virus targeting Mac, as the name suggests, falls under the latter cluster.

Any web browser is intended to be an ultimately user-friendly tool where the whole customization and features are at one’s fingertips. Ideally, things are just as smooth as that and don’t deviate from the norm unless a piece of malware interferes with a victim’s web experience. Such a disruption occurs when the Search Baron virus infects a Mac and iteratively redirects the browser to bing.com without asking for the admin’s consent.

The “nobleman” theme continues to be the trend in the cybercrime ecosystem that exploits Mac computers via a massive web traffic redistribution scheme. The Search Baron browser hijacker, which splashed onto the scene in July 2019, has been superseded by Search Marquis culprit. Both act in a similar fashion, forwarding the victims to Bing in the long run. Here’s a full security report on this brand new infection.

Browser preferences are among the fundamentals of regular computer use, being nifty shortcuts to personalize one’s Internet experience. This convenience works flawlessly until a piece of malware shows up. The category of harmful code called adware is the one to blame for tweaking victims’ web navigation defaults, as is the case with the Yahoo redirect virus on Mac. This article explains the mechanics of said attack vector.

Some Mac applications tend to become more resource-intensive as they evolve. This is a normal upshot of advanced features being brought to users’ fingertips, but it might also be a source of performance issues on older machines that lack RAM and CPU power to cope with growingly complex tasks thrown at them. Whilst a popup alert saying “Your computer is low on memory” seems to be a symptom of such a predicament, it could as well mean that the Mac is infected with a virus.

No matter how prosaic it sounds, secure web surfing is a prerequisite for a hassle-free user experience overall. Why? Because the only way cyber threats are propagating is via the Internet. Thankfully, web browsers, Internet Service Providers, and security applications are doing a commendable job of blocking malware installation attempts and online frauds. However, as is the case with safebrowse.io alerts, sometimes this benign activity goes buggy and is at odds with normal Mac usage.