Never Paste Unknown Text into Terminal!

Here’s a new scam to watch for. A client reported running across a suspicious website masquerading as a human verification test. Instead of asking him to click pictures or solve a math equation, this one asked him to copy some text from the page and paste it into Terminal. Terminal is an app that comes pre-installed on every Mac; it’s a powerful tools used by advanced users and developers for tasks such as managing files, configuring settings, and launching applications. Many, if not most, Mac users, never need to use Terminal. 

The text that our client was asked to paste into Terminal was actually an encoded script that—if pasted into Terminal and executed—would have downloaded and installed malware designed to steal user data. Infected users could lose their login password, browser history and cookies, cryptocurrency wallet information, keychain data, Notes data, and a wide variety of personal files. The moral of the story: never paste unsolicited commands into Terminal. They may seem innocuous or even unintelligible, but they’re fully capable apps that can wreak havoc on your Mac.

(Featured image by iStock.com/stevanovicigor)