Though everyone thinks Mac is highly secured, recent reports and news shows the Apple systems too are vulnerable enough as others. Threat detections on Macs are raising gradually, with a steep inclination in 2019.
“Apple computers are the most secured devices on earth! Or at least better than Windows“. That’s what we all believe when there’s a comparison between PCs in terms of security integrity. But such statements won’t last long. Recent news and statistics from Malwarebytes turn this picture upside down to give the actual idea.
Latest Statistics
Malwarebytes, an antivirus software provider, has reviewed its statistics of malware detections in 2019 and compared it to previous trends. This gave an idea about raising threats on Macs in recent years. From a report that detailed threat detections across all platforms (includes Windows PCs, Macs, and Android), 6 of the total top 25 detections were of Mac’s. And the full report has Mac’s detections of more than 16%.
If that value doesn’t seem significant, consider Mac userbase constituents about 1/12 of the total Windows userbase, now that 16% seems considerable. Isn’t it?
On a separate report of “Number of Mac detections per machine in 2019″, Malwarebytes reported that Mac users have a score of 9.8 detections per device. On the other hand, Windows was less than half of Mac’s, with 4.2 detections per device. Further reports reveal that Mac threats breaking into the top threats of world rankings, with NewTab being prominent from Mac Adware family.
Threat Instances
NewTab is an adware that’s based on browser extensions to collect data and supply ads to the user. This often hides as utility apps as flight trackers, maps/navigation, email access, etc. Another notorious app as PUP.PCVARK that’s more like advanced adware is serving Mac users too. This was banned by Google Safe Browsing, yet shows up somehow.
Wirenet was detected in 2012 that’s able to collect user data including passwords. Here an attacker can escape the sandbox (testing process) and execute the arbitrary code. Once infected onto a system, it’s capable of sending remote commands, taking screenshots, creating synthetic events and it’s clever enough to uninstall itself!
A similar malware named Mokes was detected by Kaspersky in 2016, that’s capable of collecting data secretly. All these concludes to one saying of, even Apple computers aren’t that safe considering the rapid growth of exploiting advertisers and hackers. Installing a print an antivirus software besides default ones can help.
Source: Malwarebytes
