Ransomware again

[eyeball08]

Lot of scary stuff on the radio about this recently and my other half has had a couple of very dodgy emails, safely deleted without opening.

I have an idea lurking in my brain that Apple products (iphones and ipads in our case) are not so susceptible to these malware nasties. Is there still any truth in this idea? i.e. can an iphone or ipad be totally frozen up by these unlovely people?

If it is true we could just do emails, messages, facebook on these devices. I do do this (lemonfool and finance stuff, on microsoft laptop).

[Hariseldon58]

Apple devices generally a more secure environment, hardware and operating system from the one manufacturer, automatic updates, tight eco systems tends to a more secure system.

[NomoneyNohoney]

Apple devices generally a more secure environment, hardware and operating system from the one manufacturer, automatic updates, tight eco systems tends to a more secure system.

But what about the security of emails? Are emails received on an Apple device 'safer' than on a PC?

As an example, today I received an email from Paypal, saying I had authorised a payment of $5.00 to Giorgis Christado (or some similar type of name.)
Somewhere in that confirmation of payment email, was a hyperlink to 'check your statement.' I already had suspicions about the email, so hovered over the hyperlink (allegedly to Paypal) and saw it was a goog.le Xy23T56 or something. At that point, I knew it was a phishing attempt.
Would an email with an embedded malicious link be any safer if received (and opened) on an Apple vs.PC environment?

[eyeball08]

Debian sounds interesting, never heard of it but will look into.
My original message was about ransomware freezing up your device/system completely. Sounds like this is less likely to happen with an apple device?

Obviously if you get a phishing email, open it and give away info useful to swindlers this could well still be bad....

[Stonge]

Debian is a version of Linux. I'm not an expert but I think it's safer than Windows. However, hopefully more knowledgeable people will be along soon to explain.

Apple's Operating Systems are related to Unix/Linux I believe but there have been security issues with Apple so they've obviously done something to make it more vulnerable but I don't know much about Apple stuff.

I use a Raspberry Pi 3 to surf the internet and read emails using Iceweasel browser and Icedove email client. This uses RaspBian which is a version of Debian written for the Pi.

I do occasionally transfer downloaded documents to my Windows PC using Sneaker Net so there is always a risk there.

[UncleEbenezer]

I find mac much harder to keep safe than linux (or bsd). But that's largely due to how the ecosystem works: lots of software one has to install from different sources makes for a lot of work verifying each source. And some of those sources fail to provide the digital signatures to verify their package isn't some imposter!

Online, the best way to stay safe is to separate your 'net access from your important stuff. On any unix or unix-like system (including Mac and Linux), run web and mail as an unprivileged user, with no access to important stuff. For a bit more paranoia, use a jail or chroot (drawback: setting it up is a real geek task). Or a VM: the most resource-intensive option, but one that's also available for Windows.

[Slarti]

Lot of scary stuff on the radio about this recently and my other half has had a couple of very dodgy emails, safely deleted without opening.

I have an idea lurking in my brain that Apple products (iphones and ipads in our case) are not so susceptible to these malware nasties. Is there still any truth in this idea? i.e. can an iphone or ipad be totally frozen up by these unlovely people?

If it is true we could just do emails, messages, facebook on these devices. I do do this (lemonfool and finance stuff, on microsoft laptop).

Macs are safer, mainly because there are so many less of them, so the nasty people stand a better chance of fooling a PC user just on the law of averages. But they are not totally safe. Good article here http://blog.trendmicro.com/ransomware-is-a-growing-risk-on-macs/

Slarti

[Slarti]

Apple devices generally a more secure environment, hardware and operating system from the one manufacturer, automatic updates, tight eco systems tends to a more secure system.

But what about the security of emails? Are emails received on an Apple device 'safer' than on a PC?

As an example, today I received an email from Paypal, saying I had authorised a payment of $5.00 to Giorgis Christado (or some similar type of name.)
Somewhere in that confirmation of payment email, was a hyperlink to 'check your statement.' I already had suspicions about the email, so hovered over the hyperlink (allegedly to Paypal) and saw it was a goog.le Xy23T56 or something. At that point, I knew it was a phishing attempt.
Would an email with an embedded malicious link be any safer if received (and opened) on an Apple vs.PC environment?

I'd say that the correct action on receiving an email apparently from paypal is to, without opening it, go to your paypal account by your normal rout and look at messages there. The automatic assumption for anything claiming to be from a financial is that it is an attempted fraud and by opening it you may well confirm a live email account to be sold on, at the very least.

Oh, and never, ever click links in emails. I'm going to see if I can clean a friends machine tomorrow after they did that and gained all sorts of horrible stuff on their machine.

Slarti

[Infrasonic]

Certain webmail services like Outlook.com will put a green 'trusted sender' demarcation next to genuine emails from the likes of eBay and some of the banks. I presume they must have some sort of end to end verification system in place to prevent spoofing.

All my fake eBay emails always end up in the spam folder.

[eyeball08]

Excellent and helpful stuff Slarti. Many thanks. Have a rec

[Generali]

Happy to be corrected but I had always assumed that the reason PC was more vulnerable than Apple which was more vulnerable than Unix is that if you target Microsoft then you are aiming at a bigger target so the payoff is potentially greater.

[gbjbaanb]

Lot of scary stuff on the radio about this recently and my other half has had a couple of very dodgy emails, safely deleted without opening.

I have an idea lurking in my brain that Apple products (iphones and ipads in our case) are not so susceptible to these malware nasties. Is there still any truth in this idea? i.e. can an iphone or ipad be totally frozen up by these unlovely people?

If it is true we could just do emails, messages, facebook on these devices. I do do this (lemonfool and finance stuff, on microsoft laptop).

The reason your iProduct is less susceptible comes under 2 reasons:
1. its not Windows and therefore the links are less likely to contain malicious stuff that runs on your iProduct.
2. You already know you might lose your mobile device and so are batter at backing up the important data, or don;t store anything you'll miss on it in the first place. So if it does get ransomwared, you just factory reset it.

Most email readers now don't let you click links unless you explicitly enable it (on a per-email basis). thunderbird does this, and doesn't even load images and other attachments unless you tell it its ok, so you can see what the textual contents are first.

[UncleEbenezer]

Macs are safer, mainly because there are so many less of them, so the nasty people stand a better chance of fooling a PC user just on the law of averages. But they are not totally safe. Good article here http://blog.trendmicro.com/ransomware-is-a-growing-risk-on-macs/

Slarti

You may be overstating the importance of the numbers game.

Amongst webservers, IIS was the main target back when it had one third of Apache's market share. It was just too easy to break. To take but one example.

[Arborbridge]

its not Windows and therefore the links are less likely to contain malicious stuff that runs on your iProduct.

Can you explain the reasoning or factually basis for that?

[Infrasonic]

its not Windows and therefore the links are less likely to contain malicious stuff that runs on your iProduct.

Can you explain the reasoning or factually basis for that?

Probably means that the malicious code is written to exploit known Windows weaknesses which won't necessarily exist in Mac or Linux OS'.

However as non Windows OS' become more popular there is an increased economic incentive for say ransomware code writers to find the available exploits, so it pays to be aware of the constantly changing security landscape regardless of OS. Prevention is far better than cure.

The majority of the worlds web servers now run on Linux, so by definition most of the web server hacks and infections are Linux based, which we are always told is way more secure than Windows...

As ever you can't break these things down into a binary better/worse. It's always dependent on other factors.

[UncleEbenezer]

As ever you can't break these things down into a binary better/worse.

Sometimes you really can.

The first generation of email "viruses" in the late '90s were a direct consequence of Microsoft violating the mandatory MIME standards published originally in 1992 and revised in 1993. There's an informational section in the RFC describing the risks of what Microsoft did, and you could read it as a recipe for a MS virus.

Microsoft has done a lot to improve since then. But the legacy of some of the atrocities they committed in the browser wars lives on, and will continue to make it hugely harder to defend against malicious attachments for the foreseeable future.

[Infrasonic]

^^ The most recent security reviews for the most popular browsers had MS edge as the no 1 for security, Chrome second, FF third.
I use Chrome and Edge on my W10 PC. Edge is getting better functionality wise but is still second choice for me.

Internet explorer is widely criticised for its security but again on some fronts it's actually really good. I still don't use it though.

Things change, what happened in the past is irrelevant, what exists now is what directly impacts on peoples experience.

The biggest factor in individuals getting malware/ransomware infections is ignorance of the issues, clicking on active links in spam/phishing emails, allowing graphics, enabling macros et al. If people learn nothing else about their computers at least spend an hour a week reading up on the latest security exploits.

It's impossible for any OS/app to be 100% secure, unless it is designed to do absolutely nothing...

Don't open attachments locally is the easiest way to minimise issues there.

[Slarti]

its not Windows and therefore the links are less likely to contain malicious stuff that runs on your iProduct.

Can you explain the reasoning or factually basis for that?

Much malware is written to work with one environment only, so something set to attack Ithings won't harm Windows based stuff because what it is trying to do doesn't exist, and vice versa.

The exception may well be extreme ransomware that only wants to encrypt the hard drive. But I'm not sure.

Slarti

[Slarti]

The majority of the worlds web servers now run on Linux, so by definition most of the web server hacks and infections are Linux based, which we are always told is way more secure than Windows...

I think with most web server hacks, it is not the web server OS that is compromised but that which is living on it, the website software or the SQL server database.

Or the advertising space that people sell but don't have any control over the content.

Slarti

[Infrasonic]

I think with most web server hacks, it is not the web server OS that is compromised but that which is living on it, the website software or the SQL server database.

Or the advertising space that people sell but don't have any control over the content.

Slarti

True but there are plenty of Linux kernel vulnerabilities and attacks, hence Linus Torvalds and his cohorts being kept so busy with updates...
https://www.google.co.uk/search?num=30& ... 66&bih=648