Security company says number of Mac threats growing fast

Feb 12, 2020 07:24 GMT  ·  By

Security company Malwarebytes reveals in its latest report that the number of threats aimed at Macs is growing faster than their Windows siblings, as it detected twice as many malicious attempts targeting Apple users as Windows attacks.

In other words, Macs have become hackers’ favorite targets, with Malwarebytes explaining that threats specifically going after Mac users increased by no less than 400 percent in 2019 versus the previous year.

“To see if that increase reflects the reality of the Mac threat landscape, we examined threats per endpoint on both Macs and Windows PCs. In 2019, we detected an average of 11 threats per Mac endpoint—nearly double the average of 5.8 threats per endpoint on Windows,” the company says.

According to their analysis, which is solely based on Malwarebytes customer data, Mac users were targeted by 11 threats per each endpoint last year. In the case of Windows, only 5.8 threats per each endpoint were detected in 2019.

Windows vs. Mac

As far as Windows is concerned, the number of detections actually declined by 2 percent in the case of consumers, but on the other hand, it increased by no less than 13 percent for businesses. This shows that hackers no longer go after home users, but after enterprises where a successful attack could make more damage.

Adware was the main threat for consumers running Windows last year, Malwarebytes says, followed by riskware, trojans, and other hacking tools.

When it comes to Macs, the top threat was Adware.NewTab, followed by PUP.PCVARK and PUP.MacKeeper.

“The PUPs are a variety of mostly “cleaning” apps that have been determined as unwanted not just by Malwarebytes, but by the Mac user community at large. PUPs MacKeeper and MacBooster, previously first and third on the list in 2018, fell to third and fifth place in 2019. This is likely due to the reliance of the companies behind these PUPs on a single app, each with a known bad reputation in the Mac community,” the security company explains.

For 2020, Malwarebytes anticipates an increase in terms of ransomware attacks, with hybrid attacks that rely on multi-stage payloads to become more common both against consumers and businesses.

Mac malware is on the rise

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Mac malware is on the rise
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