Mac Platforms Growth Area for Malware
You can grow a business by increasing your share of a market or you can expand the market itself. The latter is the choice of cybercriminals poised to make money off the Apple Mac platforms. The growing popularity of Macs, iPhones, and iTouches make them a logical target. Last November, Harish Garg posted in McAfee Avert Lab blog:
This is interesting month for the Mac user base, with multiple Trojans/malware appearing along with a horde of security updates from Apple itself.Things are definitely heating up in Mac Land!
Now we are getting more support for that assesment. In Report: Security-Wise, the Mac Platform Is Getting Shaky we hear from a number of security vendors on the changing Mac security landscape.
For starters, Macs users are just as susceptible to social engineering tricks as anyone else. Graham Cluley of Sophos explains in the article:
The primary method for snagging Mac users still relies on an age-old social engineering ploy. A Mac user will click on a link to see a video hyped as an exclusive expose of a film or music clip -- or, in some cases, adult-oriented content. The link actually takes the user to a Web site that determines, for example, whether to apply the VLOB virus for a PC or the RSPlug for a Mac
Paul Henry at Secure Computing noted:
Hackers have identified over 30 vulnerabilities targeting MacIntosh software. Antivirus software for the Mac is necessary because these threats are not going away quickly
We're not going to avoid malware by switching platforms. Which ever OS and browser we use, they need to be managed as if it is vulnerable because, at the end of the day, they are vulnerable.
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