a weird problem/potential infection opening on google images?

[kushala2234]

sometimes when I'm on google search images it randomly switches to not secure research (safari loses its lock and chrome actually informs about it). This happen on certain determined images especially on "shady search such as manga/comics panel and adult content. Im not visiting any sites I just see the images that google offers me. I know that an image can contain a virus and so I am kinda worried about it. it happened to me multiple time and every times I closed  instantly the page and continue the research by avoiding the "peculiar image". I should worry about this?, can It bee really a means which one could get infected?, and If so am I safe? (I hope this is the right place to post this if it isn't can you please teal me a place when this question can be answered?)

[alvarnell]

Malware imbedded imagery impacting macOS is very rare, in fact I'm not even certain there have been any threats discovered in-the-wild, just proof of concept example(s). If the staff is aware of any such infections, I'm sure they will chime in here.

[kushala2234]

so actually there's no concrete threat when it switches to not secure?

[kushala2234]

this thing it's just so odd why does the search engine react in this way. It's the site which the image is taken from that is not secure or is it the images itself messing with the search engine? 🤔

[treed]

In general, sites that use HTTP (unencrypted network communication) instead of HTTPS (encrypted communication) are not secure because this allows anyone on the same local network, or anywhere between you and the server, to see all the data being transmitted. For this reason, most browsers these days will warn you about such sites, and some will even prevent you from visiting them.

This isn't really a malware issue, though. You should be cautious about what information you send to such a site, but merely loading an insecure site does not mean your Mac is going to be infected with malware. In theory, it could happen, but this would not be simply due to a site using HTTP instead of HTTPS.