The misdeeds of adware authors have an increasingly tangible footprint in the Mac world. This exploitation, in its current state, mainly spans redirects leading to search providers the victims don’t opt for, but sometimes the mischievous applications take a different route. In a recent move, threat actors have been serving junk ads and pushing sketchy services via gsecurecontent.com domain to which web browsers are being forcibly forwarded.

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.

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 new infection.

The authors of notorious Mac adware found a workaround to fool Apple’s app notarization mechanism into allowing their code to run on Macs. The strain known as Shlayer can easily slip below the radar by making the system think it’s safe, while it’s not. In early 2020, Apple brought extra protection to the Mac by extensively checking third-party applications for dodgy characteristics such as code-signing inconsistencies.

A security enthusiast has published details on a Safari vulnerability Apple was planning to fix only a year after acknowledging the reported bug. The vulnerability was originally discovered by Pawel Wylecial who works for Poland-based cybersecurity services firm REDTEAM.PL. Technically, it is a bug in Web Share API, an interface allowing users to share browser content, such as text, links, and files, via third-party apps.