Hackers Are Increasingly Targeting MacOS
While MacOS is often considered safer compared to Windows systems, hackers are increasingly targeting Apple. The number of attacks on MacOS users have been increasing since 2012, and in 2018 there were 4 million attacks, according to telemetry from Kaspersky. During the first half of 2019, Kaspersky registered 1.8 million malware attacks on Macs.
Shlayer, which downloads and installs various adware, is the top threat seen for MacOS. I'’s making use of people's desire for pirated content. If you try to search for sites where you can watch or download a popular movie or TV series for free, the first search result will lead to resources that request you to update Flash Player in order to view content. It is these updates that contain Shlayer. Besides Shlayer, the rest of the top ten are various adware, which display ads in system notifications, web page banners, search results pages, and the browser.
Kasperksy also found almost 6 million phishing attacks on MacOS users in the first half of 2019. of which 11% were corporate users. The data suggests that the number of phishing attacks on MacOS users is rapidly growing. In 2015, there were about 850,000 attacks, in 2016, this figure grew by 86 percent to over 1.5 million. In 2017, it soared to 4 million. In 2018, the number of attacks was over 7,000,000. In the first half of 2019, almost 6,000,000 attacks were found. It is safe to assume that the number of attacks may exceed 16,000,000 by the end of the year if the current trend continues.
The attackers continue to target Apple IDs, which are the users' key to gaining access to Apple's infrastructure. Apple IDs are easy to sell. The theft of Apple IDs is the most dangerous threat MacOS users face. This type of attack is likely to be on the rise in the future.