In the growingly hybrid world of Mac malware, multipurpose infections such as GoSearch occupy a broad niche. This strain of harmful code accompanies scareware, operates as a browser hijacker, and collects victims’ personally identifiable information to pave other threats’ way into systems. Whereas the takeover of web preferences is the most conspicuous symptom, effective cleanup presupposes more than fixing the browser side of things.

Well-known researcher unveils a new powerful exploit that allows executing malicious Office macros on a Mac computer with zero user interaction. Macros in Office documents are intended to facilitate the execution of iterative tasks. These are shortcuts to performing routine actions and therefore they are, ideally, both helpful and benign. However, in pursuit of workarounds to plague systems with malicious code, cybercriminals have been mishandling macros for years.

Browser-centric malware is taking the Mac world by storm. Rather than combat top-notch infections that utilize complex persistence techniques, the victims seem to be faced with the prosaic need for trashing some mischievous plugin and rectifying their Internet settings. Although this looks like good news and no big deal, the irritation caused by browser hijackers like SearchMine is huge, plus the cleanup isn’t as easy as it may appear.

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.

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.

Mac users who think the basic online privacy provided by their browser of choice isn’t enough run the risk of falling for a redirect trap with a flavor of adware. There are plenty of fake anonymity services that don’t carry through with their promises. Meanwhile, there are entities like Search Encrypt that might accommodate some privacy features but use unethical marketing and cause irritating browser redirects.