Mac Malware – yes, the Apple can go rotten. Not as often as Windows but more frequently these days. Hackers go after Apples now.
Why?
First, Apple has the largest market share it’s had in eons. Second, businesses have a lot more Apple products alongside their Windows line of business machines. Third, Apple owners are frequently unaware of the risks.
Let me explain a little more. More market share means more emails, credit card numbers and banking details for hackers to harvest.
Hackers love in infect Apples to attack Windows computers on the same network. It’s like your Mac has turned into a technical Typhoid Mary: shows no symptoms but dangerous to other devices.
I still hear Apple owners crow about how their machines never get viruses. Wake up folks.
Recently I got a call from a Mac user who was mystified by all these pop-ups and page redirects she was getting every time she opened her browsers. Did she really have a virus?
Yes, she did. By the time I finished scanning with two different programs, I found over 80 malware items.
How do Macs get infected?
In a lot of the same ways Windows computers get infected: out of date software and operating system, out of date Java and Flash, and downloading “free” music (trust me it’s cheaper to pay $1.29 for that song than to have me fix the malware ). Hackers were using a security hole in MacKeeper recently to infection Macs.
Protect your Mac
Like Windows antivirus products, there is an annual study of what is the best Mac antivirus product. The winner for several years running is the free version of Avast Antivirus for Mac.
Malwarebytes, long one of my favourite programs to clean up crapware, recently entered the mac malware world. You can check out that product here.
Make time to update your Java, Flash and operating system with security updates.
An ounce of protection is cheaper than a pound of malware.
