http://www.macworld.com/article/163133/ ... dates.html

I doubt the installer looks anything like Adobe’s still, so that should be a clue to the authenticity. However, the golden rule applies: don’t arbitrarily hand out your admin password to every app that asks for it.

I wonder, did they pick Flash to 'fake' as because it's popular, or because people just expect it's installer to do weird stuff?

(in fact, I tend to treat anything that isn't 'drag and drop install' with a high degree of scepticism. Unless I already know why it needs my admin password, it doesn't get it).

Jon

Random installer, that most people will be familiar with. Most people have Flash, know what Flash is and probably know that it suffers from sercurity problems, so wouldn't be surprised when it is offered an update.

It would be very easy to make its installer look genuine, they just need to take a screenshot of the real installer and use it as a background image on their own window and it would look 100% genuine... Making fakes is very easy.

Just another reason to never trust anything you haven't downloaded from the developers site.
I rarely trust a third party host, especially for things from a large firm like Adobe. They have the cash to do their own hosting.

Haven't Adobe now added automatic updates to Flash (since v10.3) from within a new System Preferences pane? There should be no reason to manually download a Flash Player installer anymore, as long as you're using Flash 10.3.xx or later.

It automatically downloads, but you still have to click a few buttons and accept the EULA, before it will install... If they manage to slip the download past the user, it would fool most users.

do i need an antimalware for my mac
or just be careful what i download

I've never used any antimalware or av or anything (other than anything built into the OS).

Although I don't particularly dl that much. Used to use tvtorrents a lot but now mainly get apps from the AppStore.

Personally, I'd say the latter - at the moment.

10.7 Lion and 10.6 Snow Leopard does include a rudimentary malware checker that alerts you to known trojans and other threats if you try to download them - Apple provide signatures and updates for this as and when new threats are discovered. I think it checks for these daily and automatically updates them in the background. If you also use Safari, then it has anti-phishing support too, though I think you stated you're using Chrome (not sure if that has anything built-in to alert you to phishing attempts?).

If it makes you feel more secure, there are various anti-virus software available for Macs. There's the free Sophos Anti-Virus for Mac Home Edition and the free opensource ClamX AV - both are reporting that they're 10.7 Lion-compatible. Stay clear from Mackeeper though, which many are saying is a trojan in itself!

Common Sense 1.0 is the best antivirus software out there though.

thankyou

I happily use ClamXAV

Has it proved useful?

I've not had any strange activity...It's picked up a number of things in my SPAM box that might be harmful to Windows using friends should I forward them on...