Its name is MacSweeper, and experts say that the application is attempting to scare users into believing that their computer has a virus that this software can remove – for a fee.
According to its website, "MacSweeper is an easy-to-use but powerful application that has the ability to improve your system performance. The imbibed [sic] set of features locates all the junk and useless data on your computer and deletes them to reclaim the wasted space. It also removes all the unwanted references stored on your computer and makes it run like a new Mac."
Security experts claim that the program is a scam, similar to those previously targeting Windows-based computer systems, but in a first ever report of it targeting Mac users.
"It claims to clean compromising files from your Mac and it will always find something to fix/clean, but the only way to do so is to buy the program," Patrik Runald, threat response manager of Finnish antivirus company F-Secure, said. "[It's] designed to trick people into thinking that they have security problems and that the only way to solve them is to buy the software. Until now this issue has been a Windows-only problem, but that's not the case anymore."
In a response posted on the F-Secure website, the developers of MacSweeper stated that "The problem is that we are using selling partners that forces us to use this marketing type. We would like to leave them, we don't want to completely destroy good name of MacSweeper application."
"Mac users will increasingly come under attack from bad guys and this new rogue application and the constant stream of new variants of DNSChanger is proof of that," Runald said. "It doesn't mean that Mac is becoming less secure in and of itself. But it does mean that Mac users will have to watch out for social-engineering tricks just like Windows users have had to do for years."
DNSChanger is a Mac Trojan that is spread as a video codec claimed to enable the viewing of adult content that could not be viewed using QuickTime. Infected systems would redirect users to porn sites.