![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Internet rules at work are fairly loose but usually I don't stray into strange waters. I was eating lunch at my desk and I wanted to quick check a price on Amazon. I popped open a new tab in Chrome which put me in Google's search page. I typed in Amazon and hit the first link.
After a noticeable pause a site came up - NOT Amazon - that warned me of a security issue with my Mac - and NOT from Apple - complete with audio alarms - and gave me two phone numbers to call. It also locked my browser up and told me not to restart my computer.
Poison site - definitely scam. A url that couldn't fit in the browser bar.
I should have taken a picture of the screen with my phone but I was at work and feeling mighty embarrassed at that point. I'm pretty cautious when on line but I guess even the best can get burned - and I'm not the best.
I unplugged the laptop and trotted it down to Engineering for our Top Geek to look at. I couldn't see exactly what he was doing but he shut down the system, logged into Admin and I think he just cleared the browser history.
The site knew I was on a Mac - that's fairly easy to do as that information is needed by most browsers to operate. (Because of shitty coding.) With most browsers set to restore to the last open site if shut down I'm sure the site would have persisted the moment I restarted Chrome. I'm just curious how it locked up my browser.
If I was a Black Hat I'd want Revenge. If I was a White Hat I'd want Justice. But I'm a hardware geek and this is software. I don't even own a Hat.
But it's times like this I wish I did.
-m
After a noticeable pause a site came up - NOT Amazon - that warned me of a security issue with my Mac - and NOT from Apple - complete with audio alarms - and gave me two phone numbers to call. It also locked my browser up and told me not to restart my computer.
Poison site - definitely scam. A url that couldn't fit in the browser bar.
I should have taken a picture of the screen with my phone but I was at work and feeling mighty embarrassed at that point. I'm pretty cautious when on line but I guess even the best can get burned - and I'm not the best.
I unplugged the laptop and trotted it down to Engineering for our Top Geek to look at. I couldn't see exactly what he was doing but he shut down the system, logged into Admin and I think he just cleared the browser history.
The site knew I was on a Mac - that's fairly easy to do as that information is needed by most browsers to operate. (Because of shitty coding.) With most browsers set to restore to the last open site if shut down I'm sure the site would have persisted the moment I restarted Chrome. I'm just curious how it locked up my browser.
If I was a Black Hat I'd want Revenge. If I was a White Hat I'd want Justice. But I'm a hardware geek and this is software. I don't even own a Hat.
But it's times like this I wish I did.
-m
