Mac Malware: McAfee Reports Huge Increase In Malware On MacOS

Think your Mac isn’t susceptible to viruses? Think again. A recent report from security software company McAfee showed malware targeting MacOS grew by 744 percent over the course of 2016.

According to the McAfee Labs Intel Threat Report for April 2017, there were 460,000 instances of MacOS malware detected in the wild, a figure that includes a massive 245 percent spike in Mac malware spotted in the fourth quarter of 2016 alone.

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While there have been several examples of truly troubling MacOS malware floating around in recent months, including cases of ransomware that will hold important files hostage until the victim pays a fee.

However, much of the Mac-based threats that make up the rapid growth in the malware market come from adware, or software that collecting user information without the user’s knowledge for the purposes of advertising to them.

Adware is annoying and can direct people to even more malicious malware by injecting junk advertisements or search results into a user’s web experience. But for the most part, adware tends to be less harmful to the machine itself than other attacks.

It’s not surprisingly MacOS has been the subject of more attackers given how relatively untouched the operating system is compared to Windows. MacOS owns just over six percent of the computer market, according to NetMarketShare, but accounted for less than one percent of the attacks reported by McAfee.

Windows still takes the bulk of the 638 million total instances of malware reported in 2016 by the cyber security firm, which included a 24 percent increase over the course of the year—though it did experience a slight drop in the third quarter.

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While desktop attacks continued to grow, mobile saw the biggest increase in malware last year, with a 99 percent spike in 2016.

Similar to desktop, that growth is happening primarily on a platform that does not belong to Apple. There were more than 15 million mobile malware samples identified by McAfee in 2016, but they hit almost exclusively Android devices.