Reports suggest that Mac is no longer a safe haven as it was believed to be; Mac malware reportedly is now the highest it has ever been and there has been a 230% rise in Mac malware attacks in the last twelve months, starting July 2016.
Security analysts, who are now researching on the trends and also on how malware sneak past security software like antivirus for Mac, infer that malware attacks on Mac would definitely increase in the months to come. They have also found that there is an increase in scam software targeting Mac App store.
In today’s scenario, Mac and Android have turned increasingly vulnerable and all kinds of malicious applications now target these immensely popular operating systems. Most of these even manage to make past the app store review process and even some of the popularly used Mac security software.
It was recently that experts revealed that a FruitFly malware which had infected hundreds of Macs had remained undetected for years. This rather sophisticated malware even takes control of the camera on the Mac device and uses it to spy on the user, logging what all is happening on screen. At least 400 (the real figure could be even higher) have been known to be infected with the FruitFly malware. The interesting thing is that though the source of the bug hasn’t been found, the researchers have explained that it works on the Mac Yosemite OS.
In recent months, Mac devices have been increasingly attacked with the new Proton Remote Access Trojan (RAT), which mostly focus on exfiltration of password data from sources like the Mac-OS keychain, 1Password vaults, and browser auto-fill data. Luckily for Mac users, ransomware, which have been creating much trouble globally for Windows users, still seem to be rare among the malware that hit Mac devices.
Coming to Android devices, the trend has been notable. The second quarter of 2017 has reportedly recorded a 100 percent increase in attacks on Android devices. The first three months of the year have reportedly registered a 138 percent increase in Android ransomware attacks. The ‘screen locker’ransomware is now very popular among hackers targeting Android devices. The most common ransomware families attacking Android devices are Jisut, SLocker and Koler. Jisut and SLocker sneak in as fake software updates or bundled along with infected applications.
So, it’s high time Mac users, and Android users as well, started taking proactive steps to ensure maximum security by using android antivirus.
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Related Resources:
https://antivirus.comodo.com/blog/computer-safety/five-best-virus-and-malware-removal-tools/