OS X hit by first ever piece of ransomware

Over the last 15 years or so, Apple's Mac platform has traditionally been a much safer computing environment than Windows. Of course, this wasn't necessarily due to OS X having incredibly stronger security protections, but was rather a reflection of the fact that hackers were prone to targeting Windows given its stature as the most commonly used OS on the planet.

But the times they are a chagin'. As the Mac has become more popular in recent years, hackers are increasingly setting their sights on OS X users who may now be operating with false sense of security as it pertains to malware.

Illustrating this changing dynamic, OS X over the weekend was hit with its first piece of malware. This past Saturday, Transmissionbt.com issued a warning indicating that version 2.9 of Transmission - a popular and easy to use BitTorrent client - was infected with ransomware. As such, victims of the attack were greeted with messages stating that their hard drive had been encrypted and that the only way to decrypt it was to pay a fee of about $400.

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