Report: As Macs grow in popularity, so does security threats
Posted by Dennis Sellers 
Jan 21, 2008 at 1:51pm
Mac OS X is safer today—but not necessarily more secure for the long term—than Windows, according to an Infoworld report.
The article says that as Apple continues to grow its worldwide market share and the company’s products find their way into more business environments, attackers are certain to follow and create greater volumes of exploits aimed at vulnerabilities in the company’s software, security experts contend.
According to industry analyst firm Gartner, Apple shipped just over one million Macs during the fourth quarter of 2007, a gain of 227,000 over the fourth quarter of 2006. The analyst firm reported that Apple’s U.S. market share for 2007 jumped by 28 percent compared to 2006, rising to just over six percent. And with Apple CEO Steve Jobs stating at last week’s Macworld Expo and Conference that the company has already sold 4 million iPhones and 5 million copies of Leopard (Mac OS X 10.5), its latest OS, since launching the products last year, the company’s prospects look stronger than ever.
However, malware researchers and industry analysts warn that as the sheer number of Apple end-point devices in use worldwide rise, so will the security concerns tied to the company’s products, according to Infoworld.
“It’s hard to get around market share. At the end of the day, malware writers don’t care what operating system you are using; it’s about whether or not you have valuable information on your machine and whether there is an opportunity to take advantage of it,” David Marcus, security research manager for McAfee’s Avert Labs group, told the publication. “Microsoft Windows has been targeted so aggressively because it has a much broader deployment than the Mac OS. But the malware authors watch trends just like everyone else, and they know more people are considering a move to Apple, including government institutions and businesses; if it makes financial sense to go after that opportunity at some point, they will move in that direction.”
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Dennis Sellers
Dennis has been a newspaper editor/reporter (seven years) and teacher (seven years). He has over 4,000 magazine, newspaper and online articles to his credit. He has also covered the Mac and tech industries for over a decade for such online publications as MacCentral, MacMinute and now MacsimumNews.
Rick Auricchio Says:
Maybe.
But the whole report is just a wild guess.
I wonder whether it was funded by companies selling antivirus products.
Posted on January 21, 2008