My Wife's Malwarebytes-protected MBA Had a Problem

[ungawah]

Safari got this today for some unknown reason. See http://tlmiller.net/Strange.jpg

Last week she got something similar that locked her Mac.  Okay after a shutdown.

[Porthos]

15 minutes ago, ungawah said:

Safari got this today for some unknown reason. See http://tlmiller.net/Strange.jpg

Last week she got something similar that locked her Mac.  Okay after a shutdown.

Typical scam malvertisement. Never call the number. Suggest adding Malwarebytes Browser guard for safari to help prevent these.

[alvarnell]

4 hours ago, ungawah said:

Last week she got something similar that locked her Mac.  Okay after a shutdown

I suspect it was not actually locked. There is a javascript trick they use which requires the user to attempt to dismiss the dialog 99 times in order for it to actually go away.

[ungawah]

Thanks to both of you.  Not sure what my wife is doing to trigger these two events -- I hope this doesn't indicate some underlying problem.

[alvarnell]

1 hour ago, ungawah said:

Not sure what my wife is doing to trigger these two events -- I hope this doesn't indicate some underlying problem.

All she did was visit a site that was probably subscribed to a 3rd party advertising service that wasn't that reputable. These pop-ups are usually hidden in one of the rotating ads on the site with that javascript embedded within it. She doesn't even have to click on or pay any attention to the ad for it to be triggered.

And the only underlying problem is that her browser isn't equipped with a good ad-blocker extension/add-on. That's why @Porthos recommended you get her the Malwarebytes Browser Guard.

[treed]

5 hours ago, alvarnell said:

All she did was visit a site that was probably subscribed to a 3rd party advertising service that wasn't that reputable.

It doesn't even have to be a service that wasn't reputable. Even the most reputable advertising services can fall victim to "malvertising," where someone manages to get a malicious ad into their queue. That's a very common occurrence these days, and it undermines what little respectability online advertising had left. Ads cannot be considered to be a harmless annoyance any longer. They always have the potential to be malicious, and as others have stated, a good ad blocker is really the only solution.