Phishing scams have a long history on the web so there's no surprise that new attacks have been detected by security companies in the world. But what's really important is that Apple, the Cupertino-based company which has never been targeted by such scams, has recently turned into phishers' main objective. Cited by PC Advisor, Andrew Lochart of Proofpoint warned that a brand new phishing scam targeting iTunes users was spotted on the web in what seems to be the first major attack involving the famous Mac OS X developer. Until now, there have only been a few and isolated phishing scams involving Apple, but the company's increasing success may bring an avalanche of attacks over the Apple consumers, Lochart explains.

"We've gotten used to seeing the usual companies and brands attacked, like PayPal, eBay and Citibank. But we've never seen Apple as the target. It's probably indicative that the bad guys see Apple's online presence as large enough to be a target. It's part and parcel of the success that Apple has enjoyed lately," Andrew Lochart said according to PC Advisor.

The iTunes phishing scam works in the traditional manner meaning that users receive a spam message asking to correct some issues in their iTunes accounts. Obviously, the emails come with a link to a malicious website which, once visited asks users to enter sensitive information such as credit card accounts and social security numbers.

As usual, users who receive such an email message should ignore them as soon as they reach the inbox. Moreover, an update to the anti-virus or any other security solution which may exist on a computer would be welcomed.

And in case you wish to download the latest version of iTunes, you can do it straight from Softpedia using this link. The Mac OS X version is also available on Softpedia, on our Mac downloads section.