'Your Mac needs to be updated to improve compatibility' Phishing

Users report viewing a strange message on their Mac computers, namely, 'Your Mac needs to be updated to improve compatibility.' Seeing this message is bad news, as this indicates that you may have installed an unsafe application on your Mac. The goal of this software is to collect your login credentials.

It is likely that the application responsible for the 'Your Mac needs to be updated to improve compatibility' message is propagated via malvertising, bogus software updates or downloadvertisements, fake emails that contain corrupted attachments, etc. The 'Your Mac needs to be updated to improve compatibility' tactic spawns a very well-designed fraudulent message, which looks just like a legitimate system notification that you may see as a Mac user. This would be enough to trick many Mac users into filling in their login credentials to initialize the update.

Keep in mind that Apple does not initialize updates using this method – if you see the 'Your Mac needs to be updated to improve compatibility' prompt, you are surely dealing with con actors and not a legitimate system notification. Users who enter their login credentials would allow the operators of the 'Your Mac needs to be updated to improve compatibility' tactic to obtain their username and password.

Users who see the 'Your Mac needs to be updated to improve compatibility' prompt spawned on their Macs should not engage with it and scan their system with the help of a reputable anti-virus software suite that will detect and remove the issue immediately.