Have you been searching online and out of nowhere a scary pop-up with a loud beep came on your screen saying that ‘Your Mac Is Infected With 3 Viruses!’? Were the listed viruses named Tapsnake, CronDNS, and Dubfishicv? If that sounds familiar to you, then don’t worry and rush to install the offered security program by this dubious web page, because there is actually no malware in your computer yet, but there will be if you do what this scam alert recommends.
Tapsnake Virus Crondns Dubfishicv quicklinks
- What is Tapsnake virus
- How does Tapsnake, CronDNS, Dubfishicv virus spread
- How to remove Tapsnake virus from Mac
- Automatic Malware removal tools
(Win)
Note: Spyhunter trial provides detection of parasites and assists in their removal for free. limited trial available, Terms of use, Privacy Policy, Uninstall Instructions,
(Mac)
Note: Combo Cleaner trial provides detection of parasites and assists in their removal for free. limited trial available, Terms of use, Privacy Policy, Uninstall Instructions, Refund Policy ,
Mac computers are known to be harder and less likely get compromised compared to Windows OS, therefore users, who are used to feeling really confident after seeing this pop-up message about a very harmful Tapsnake virus and other threats damaging their system, can absolutely lose their mind. But that is what the crooks are aiming because the Scareware techniques like this make targeted victims lose their common sense and base actions on negative emotions, voluntary enabling malicious deeds.
If you’ve found this article before installing any offered suspicious antivirus program by ‘Your Mac Is Infected With 3 Viruses!‘ or ‘MAC OS is infected with Spyware‘ page , then simply know that this pop-up is a scam and you shouldn’t listen to it, and for the peace of the mind you should run a scan with a reputable antivirus tool to make sure that it’s not generated by another potentially unwanted program in your Mac. However, if you did proceed with everything this website asked, you already know that now your computer is indeed compromised just not with Tapsnake, CronDNS or Dubfishicv viruses, but the rogue application like Mac Tweak Pro, Advanced Mac Cleaner or Mac Cleanup Pro, which do need to be get rid of as soon as possible.
What is Tapsnake virus
The Tapsnake virus is a Scareware fraud that currently is spreading as a flashy pop-up, that tries to trick the Mac users into thinking that their system is heavily infected and that they should download the security product, which is supposed to remove these viruses. Tapsnake, CronDNS, Dubfishicv, and E.tre456_worm_osx are the names of the alleged threats that the alert reports the malware scanner has found on the victim’s Mac. Also, back in the day, Tapsnake was known as a Mobile game malware, that would serve as a simple entertainment app, but would secretly report the developer’s servers the location of the user every 15 minutes. However, in this article, we are talking about another variant.
This Tapsnake virus is not real, but the applied social engineering skills present it pretty terrifying, hence making lots of users fall for the scam. In the beginning, the first message that comes up is a ‘Your System Is Infected With 3 Viruses!’, which is already a frightening alert, especially if you don’t know much about phishing attacks. After that, if you decide to trust the message and ‘Scan Now’ the computer, a Fake scanner bar appears, imitating real antivirus detection processes and several seconds later results come up which say what these 3 viruses are:
Download required
Your Mac is heavily damaged (33.2%)
Please download the Advanced Mac Cleaner application to remove 3 viruses from your Mac.Virus information
Virus name: Tapsnake; CronDNS; Dubfishicv
Risk: HIGH
Infected Files: /os/apps/hidden/os-component/X/snake.icv;/local/conf/keyboard/retype.icv…Remove viruses now
First things first, browsers don’t have the ability to scan the whole computer, because they simply don’t have such authorization and secondly real malware scans take much longer than just a few seconds because of all the data, that is written inside the drives, and lastly the mentioned viruses like Tapsnake, CronDNS, and Dubfishicv do not exist. Unfortunately, users who are manipulated by this alert end up getting the advised antivirus program, which later appears to be a very persistent and unnecessary software. Mind you, once you open the path for one shady application, system’s security becomes more vulnerable, therefore other real viruses can attack your computer much easier, so removing this PUP as soon as possible is the best you can do.
How does Tapsnake, CronDNS, Dubfishicv virus spread
The alert about Tapsnake, CronDNS, and Dubfishicv virus infection is a follow up after the ‘Your Mac Is Infected With 3 Viruses!’ or MAC OS is infected with Spyware scam. These scary messages come from domains like www.apple.com-improve-macos.live, in our case, or some other ones that crooks specifically designed to spread their unwanted programs. Some other most popular sites behind the Tapsnake virus infection are apple.com-clean-macbook.live, apple.com-macbook-secure.me, com-macbook-mend.systems, com-safe-mac.systems, 5893756617www.apple.com-clean-macbook.live, www.www.apple.com-clean-macbook.live. So if these URLs pop-up on your browser, know that the following messages are going to be not true.
While transfers to such redirects can happen after browsing untrustworthy pages with malicious ads (you’d be surprised what websites contain the most threats), they can also be generated by adware programs that install secretly in bundles of other programs. Video Chimp, PDFKing, and CouponRockstar, are just a few potential examples of unwanted programs, which cause excessive advertisements and distribute other viruses or redirect to scams. They simply enter in the same installer that you can get from shady sites like Download.com, Cnet.com and other freeware distribution vendors, torrents and etc. In order to avoid them, you have to always get your apps from official sites, and run Setup Assistant in Custom/Advanced mode, to opt-out from the additional software that is preselected to set up with the main product.
How to remove Tapsnake virus from Mac
As you understand by now, there is no such thing as a Tapsnake virus but there is a consequential rogue application that this scam proliferates, which can be different in each case, starting with Advanced Mac Cleaner, Mac Tweaker (Mac Tweak Pro, Mac Tweak), MacRapidizer, Mac Cleanup Pro and etc. One of them is the main malicious program that you need to remove. Mind you, as we mentioned before, there might be an adware infection too, which could have generated the fraudulent pop-up in the first place. While yet its unclear what potentially unwanted applications could be responsible for causing the reroutes to questionable sites, there is a practical technique that removes both the rogue program and adware at the same time.
Automatic elimination with special anti-spyware software like Combo Cleaner, Malwarebytes is the most effective and fast malware termination option. These security programs are reputable, sophisticated and trusted by cyber professionals and regular computer owners, unlike the bogus ones that infected your Mac. Above-mentioned products are not only beneficial deleting the threats that got in from the fraudulent message, but also because they are going to clean the system from all other threats as well.
Note: Spyhunter trial provides detection of parasites and assists in their removal for free.
limited trial available,
Terms of use, Privacy Policy, Uninstall Instructions,
Note: Combo Cleaner trial provides detection of parasites and assists in their removal for free.
limited trial available,
Terms of use, Privacy Policy, Uninstall Instructions, Refund Policy ,
Automatic Malware removal tools
(Win)
(Mac)
Our researchers noticed that at the moment the Tapsnake virus scam disseminates Mac Tweak Pro, therefore the manual removal instructions are based on it. If your computer got compromised with another rogue application follow the same instructions, just eliminate files accordingly related to that software’s name. If you doubt your ability to find the right folders or terminating it according to the guidelines did not work, then we still advise trusting your issue to an automatic removal tool.
- Remove Mac Tweak Pro from Login Items.Go to System Preferences > Users & Groups > Current User > Login Items. Check ‘Mac Tweak Pro’ and click on the ‘-‘ button at the bottom of the window. This will prevent the malicious program from booting up automatically every time you turn the system on, making the computer to run faster.
- Delete Mac Tweak Pro program from Applications.Go to Finder > Applications > Select Mac Tweak Pro and drag to Trash bin > Empty Trash. This will get rid of the main files of the PUP.
- Eliminate leftover Mac Tweak Pro preferences from Library.Go to Finder > Go > Go To Folder > Type ‘~/Library’. Then search various folders for the leftover files that can be related to Mac Tweak Pro or PCVARK and delete them. You may find:
- Library/Mac Tweak Pro
- Application Support/Mac Tweak Pro
- Application Support/mtp
- LaunchAgents/com.tlcwws.hlprmtp.plist
- LaunchAgents/com.MacTweakPro.agent.plist
- LaunchAgents/com.MacTweakPro.hlpr
- LaunchAgents/MTP.hlpr
- LaunchAgents/MacTweakPro.agent
If the Mac Tweak Pro is still not going anywhere, try quitting the application by pressing Option, Command, and Esc buttons together, then choose ‘Force Quit’ after selecting Mac Tweak Pro and repeat the processes above once more.