PUP.MacShiny

MacShiny (PUP.MacShiny) is a potentially unwanted application for Mac systems. It is classified as scareware because of the particular behavior it exhibits. There are thousands of utilities for Mac and many of them can be useful. MacShiny is not one of them. It poses as an optimization tool but has all the marks of malicious scareware.

The first red flag is raised by the fact that MacShiny gets on users’ machines without their expressed knowledge or permission. The most common scenario is the user installs MacShiny inadvertently because MacShiny is bundled with another application.

Once it gets in the system, MacShiny does what most every scareware application does. It runs "scans" that always detect a myriad of threats and the conclusion is that the user’s system is "at risk." The scan results are fake and so are the detected threats and problems. This is the defining tactic scareware uses and the goal is to make the user purchase the full version of the application.

While it’s unlikely to actually cause any harm to the machine, scareware can be extremely intrusive and annoying. The constant barrage of pop-ups and warnings can negatively impact the users experience and be detrimental to the user’s work process.