As indispensable as they are, web browsers are a weak link in computer security and get exploited big time. It might seem the reason is that people use them to visit various sites, some of which can be hacked or malicious – and that’s partially true. However, the biggest scourge is what the users download and what kind of harmful software can sneak inside the Macs this way. The QSearch virus story is just like that.

Mac users are faced with a surge of adware apps that come out of the blue and make a mess of the web browsing experience. There is a peculiar lineage of these culprits sharing a number of characteristics and resembling one another so closely that the names are pretty much the only distinguishing hallmarks. Phase Search is the latest junk spawned by this rapidly proliferating strain, featuring an app icon and behavior patterns identical to those of its numerous predecessors.

One of the biggest cyber misconceptions debunked over the past decade is about Mac computers getting no malware. Numerous outbreaks of adware, browser hijackers, scareware, and ransomware specifically going after Macs proved this illusion wrong and caused analysts to rethink how security should work in the Apple environment. MacRepair is an app that typifies a peculiar, hybrid zone of this shady landscape.

The Internet is first and foremost an inexhaustible source of data, everything else coming next on the list of benefits. No wonder the niche of web search enhancement tools is a prolific one. Many of these applications actually make it easier to find information, but others wreak havoc with user experience while pretending to be useful. The Search Pulse app for Mac is in the latter category.

Downloading streaming content can be a risky enterprise. First of all, it’s illegal to convert such materials from YouTube and many other similar sites into downloadable files. Secondly, there are services that claim to do the trick but turn out to be really annoying or even harmful. YTmp3 is an example of how a solution from this category can cross the red line and cause numerous inconveniences to users instead of meeting their expectations.

The virus called Emotet has grown into a real global plague over the years. Having emerged in 2014 as banking malware targeting Windows PCs and corporate networks, it has undergone a number of overhauls in the course of the past five years to additionally distribute other opportunistic threats, brute force admin credentials, steal email passwords, and do much more damage while being incredibly hard to detect.