---
title: One million Macs exposed to malvertising scam
description: At least a million machines exposed
---

[News - Confiant ](https://www.confiant.com/news)

# [One million Macs exposed to malvertising scam](https://www.confiant.com/news/one-million-macs-exposed-to-malvertising-scam)

 Written by [Mac Daily News](https://www.confiant.com/news/author/mac-daily-news) | Mar 22, 2019 4:00:00 AM

“A malvertising campaign has been targeting Macs since at least mid-January, with at least a million machines exposed, security firm Confiant said in a blog posting this week,” Paul Wagenseil reports for Tom’s Guide.

“The malicious ads lure users into updating their Adobe Flash players — but that update is really a downloader called Shlayer that opens up the Mac to even more malware,” Wagenseil reports. “To evade malware screeners, the ads first load normally, but then draw in malicious content from a Firebase, a Google-hosted online data repository designed for mobile-app makers.”

“The million machines exposed weren’t necessarily infected. Their users just all had a malicious ad load in a browser window,” Wagenseil reports. “The user would still have to click on the ad, and then click again to authorize the installation of the Flash Player ‘update’ to become infected.”

**Read Complete Article: [https://macdailynews.com/2019/03/22/one-million-macs-exposed-to-malvertising-scam/](https://macdailynews.com/2019/03/22/one-million-macs-exposed-to-malvertising-scam/)**

[View full post](https://www.confiant.com/news/one-million-macs-exposed-to-malvertising-scam)

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