F-Secure Study Shows Increase in Fresh Mac E-threats

Security investigators from F-Secure the security company recently compiled a report that indicates how new threats have been evolving over the last nine months of 2011. Interestingly, the numbers referred to suggest the fresh distinct malware samples the investigators detected during April-December 2011.

Notably, the study that F-Secure conducted reveals that during Q2-Q3-Q4 2011, there were an estimated 58 fresh Mac malware strains from which just a single Mac malware occurred during April as well as August 2011 each. In May 2011, 6 Mac malware appeared, while in June -121, July -5, September -9, November -9, December -4, and the maximum counting 11 appearing in October 2011.

Also, the majority of these freshly emerging malware strains for the Mac comprised Trojan downloaders when 29 of them emerged between April and December 2011. Following these, backdoors came on No.2 at 15 in all while fake AV and Trojans counted 7 each.

Interestingly, these numbers of malware for Mac are nothing when contrasted with those for Windows, F-Secure blogs adding that they are certainly something when contrasted with all of the malware for Mac observed before 2011.

And as F-Secure rightly forecasted during May 2011, Mac threats hadn't increased steadily because of market share, though instead, was more owing to the exploitative "bubble economies," which had introduced fresh 'fits-and-starts' oriented malware strains.

In the meantime, according to Technical Director Luis Corrons at PandaLabs, luckily there appears to be a greater awareness among Mac users that they aren't non-vulnerable to malware assaults and so are seen increasingly utilizing anti-virus (AV) solutions to prevent attacks by cyber-criminals. ITPro published this in news on January 7, 2012.

Moreover, according to F-Secure, the total number of Mac malicious programs will expectedly keep on rising during 2012.

In addition to these, the company discovered a Trojan for Mac OS X in September last that pretended to be a Flash Player. The software was so dangerous that its updated version even attempted at deactivating the anti-malware capabilities built into Apple products. But besides that, one other malicious software emerged, which pretended to be an AV program from MacDefender.

Related article: F-Secure Alerts against Bogus Windows Update Sites

» SPAMfighter News - 1/24/2012