Most common Mac-based malware revealed

Earlier this month, Sophos announced its free Mac anti-virus for home users. The product now has 150,000 active users and Sophos has analysed the most commonly encountered malware that Mac users are seeing.

The top 20 most commonly detected malware from just under 50,000 malware reports from users of Sophos Anti-Virus for Mac Home Edition between 2 November and 16 November this year are:

Many of the threats detected are Windows-specific threats that do not attack Mac OS X directly, but can be transferred by Mac machines to other platforms. However, this list also shows some Mac OS X-specific Trojans that are typically disguised by hackers on BitTorrent sites, or planted on websites as alluring downloads or plugins to view videos, as well as platform-independent Java attacks.

“Mac users cannot afford not to protect their machines. As long as Mac users don’t properly defend themselves, they will increasingly be perceived as a soft target by cyber criminals and we will therefore see the volume of Mac-specific malware continue to rise,” says Brett Myroff, CEO of regional Sophos distributor, Sophos South Africa.

“It is reassuring that we’ve been receiving feedback from users who were surprised to find malware on their Macs.  Hopefully, more and more Mac users will start to realise that security isn’t just an issue for PC users and they will start to take more measures to protect their computers,” he adds.

Is Mac secure enough to do without anti-virus << Discuss on the MyBroadband forum.

Don't miss the latest news

• Add MyBroadband as a preferred source in Google Search
• Follow MyBroadband on Google News