The Era of Mac Malware Immunity Is Over

For years, security experts predicted that as Apple gained market share, cybercriminals would turn their attention from Windows machines toward Mac attacks. Now it appears to really be happening. Apple's Mac OS X operating system now enjoys a market share of more than 15 percent in the U.S., according to Swedish Web-monitoring service Pingdom. 

"We are now seeing Mac-specific malware that we hadn't seen before," said Michael Sutton, vice president of security research at Sunnyvale, Calif.-based security company Zscaler. In the past few weeks there have been examples such as MacDefender, a fake antivirus program that hijacked the name of a legitimate security program in an attempt to trick Mac users into divulging credit card numbers. While Apple advocates have argued for years that Macs were inherently more secure, most experts say that the hackers simply follow the market. Smartphones are also more attractive because they are constantly connected to the Internet. By the time an infection is discovered, the attackers have made their money with fraudulent charges and moved on.

Websites are designed to infect any computer that inadvertently visits the site, whether it be a Windows or Mac OS X computer running any of a half-dozen Web browsers. The popularity of Apple's iPhone and iPad has had a "halo effect" that attracts both consumers and criminals to the platform, so Mac owners should keep their browsers up to date and be more cautious. Still, much of the computing world, and especially the corporate enterprise side, relies on Microsoft Windows.

"So the Apple malware is still small compared to what we see on the PC side," noted Sutton. But it may be not for long. TechNews Daily