MacOS – How to get rid of booby-trapped pop ups to update flash player

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I'm coming across a malicious pop up to update my flash player. The message in the pop up:

Warning! Your Adobe Flash Player version is outdated. Security risks. Please update now.

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I've seen this pop up across multiple browsers (chrome, safari, firefox) and occurs on all OSX machines on the local network. I've attempted to disable on plugins and extensions in chrome but the problem remains. Clicking ok takes me to a website that appears to be an official adobe website but the link to download the update is clearly wrong.
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This problem just happened today across three machines simultaneously and I'm stumped as how to proceed. What's the best way to remove these pop ups?

Best Answer

When weird things happen on my clients' Macs, the first thing I do is run the free Malwarebytes' Anti-Malware (MBAM, formerly AdwareMedic software to see if any of the known "bad guys" is active on the system. As often as not, they are.

Also, have a look at your /etc/hosts file through Terminal:

  1. Open Utilities > Terminal (or use Spotlight)
  2. more /etc/hosts (press space bar to scroll a screen at a time)

See if fplayer.adobe.com is listed there. If so, we'll discuss how to remove it.

Try that and report back. Then we'll try step two.

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