“Apple’s market share of desktop computers is nearing 17 percent,” Jeremy Kirk reports for IDG News Service. “OS X, Apple’s operating system, is popular with consumers and enterprises, making it a more interesting target for hackers.”
“A report to be released on Thursday by the security company Bit9 + Carbon Black shows that more malware has been found this year for OS X than in the last five years combined. The company found 948 unique samples of malware this year compared to 180 between 2010 and last year,” Kirk reports. “Although the increase is large, the malware isn’t very sophisticated and is easy to remove, security experts say. More than half of the malware found this year was aimed at forcing people to view advertisements, a class of annoyances known as adware. Also, infections were mostly dependent on users making poor decisions, such as downloading what should be recognized as questionable software [trojans].”
“The jump in OS X malware also still pales in comparison to Windows,” Kirk reports. “‘If you put all of the Mac malware that we’ve seen, and you combine those numbers for the history of OS X, basically it is less by a significant amount than the amount of Windows malware you will see in an hour,’ said Rich Mogull, an analyst with Securiosis in Phoenix, Arizona.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: All of the OS X “malware” ever, over 14.5 years worth, is significantly less than the Windows malware seen in an hour. An hour.
This isn’t Windows, hackers. OS X is UNIX, the Unix version with the largest installed base in the world and backed by the world’s most valuable compnay, no less. Good luck with anything beyond adware and silly trojans. You’re gonna need it.