Long ago has been proved that once-popular statement “there is no viruses for the Mac” is far from the truth, and attackers regularly attack Apple device users. Malwarebytes says Mac threats “increased exponentially”.
This confirmed recent Malwarebytes report, in which researchers analyzed cyberattacks aimed at Mac users over the past year and concluded that attacks on Mac were significantly more frequent.Mac threats increased exponentially in comparison to those against Windows PCs. While overall volume of Mac threats increased year-over-year by more than 400 percent”, — told Malwarebytes specialists.
Researchers write that in 2019, the average number of threat detections per Mac device was 11 (compared with an average of 4.8 in 2018). Therefore, in fact, the number of attacks on Mac users has more than doubled.
Interestingly, in 2019 the number of threat detections on the Mac was even higher than on Windows: on average it consisted 5.8 detections per Windows machine per year”, – say the researchers.
At the same time, Malwarebytes experts note that Mac-oriented threats are significantly different from those intended for systems running Windows. For example, while the most common threats for Mac users are adware and other potentially unwanted programs.
However, experts believe that this may change soon, and criminals will launch more destructive attacks on Apple systems. Earlier we wrote that sometimes in the past Apple employees almost did not have time to fix vulnerabilities in a fresh OS.
Although these threats cannot be considered as dangerous as traditional malware, they are becoming an increasingly serious and visible obstacle for Mac users who can no longer claim that their favorite systems are protected from malware”, – write the researchers.
What else do Malwarebytes experts warn users in their report?
- The volume of global threats against business endpoints has increased by 13 percent year-over-year, with aggressive adware, Trojans, and HackTools leading the pack.
- Organizations were once again hammered with Emotet and TrickBot, two Trojan-turned-botnets that surfaced in the top five threats for nearly every region of the globe, and in the top detections for the services, retail, and education industries.
- TrickBot detections in particular increased more than 50 percent over the previous year.
- Net new ransomware activity is at an all-time high against businesses, with families such as Ryuk and Sodinokibi increasing by as much as 543 and 820 percent, respectively.
