- Joined
- Aug 14, 2014
https://www.pcmag.com/news/malwarebytes-report-macs-threats-up-400-percent
"The good news first: Detections of consumer threats were down 2 percent from 2018 (41.7 million to 40.9 million, which is still an egregious number). The bad news: Businesses got attacked 13 percent more (leaping from 8.5 million to 9.6 million). Combining both showed a 1 percent increase... ...Adware spiked in the early part of 2019, then dropped. But it was the number-one threat category for the year, up 463 percent from 2018. Hacktools detected in business also were way up—224 percent. Ransomware, always a high-profile threat, was technically down 6 percent."
"Perhaps most interesting to the PCMag audience is that the Windows PC platform, which many think of as the most under threat, may have become the safer platform to use. MacOS detections per endpoint went up from 4.8 in 2018 to 11.0 last year. That's double the attacks that were detected on Windows in 2019 (5.8). Malwarebytes attributes this to more Macs being sold, making the platform far more attractive to cybercriminals. At least one family of adware, named NewTab, had 30 million detections on Macs by Malwarebytes—and it hadn't shown up on the company's radar until late 2018. The report notes that while there are threats to iOS, there is no way to scan for them. A lot of it is "nation-state malware," meaning other countries spreading phone infections. And on Android? It says, "mere stats cannot fully explain the threat landscape for Android users in 2019." These treats included pre-installed malware (the manufacturer actually shipped the device with malware installed), trojans, and stalkerware."
"The good news first: Detections of consumer threats were down 2 percent from 2018 (41.7 million to 40.9 million, which is still an egregious number). The bad news: Businesses got attacked 13 percent more (leaping from 8.5 million to 9.6 million). Combining both showed a 1 percent increase... ...Adware spiked in the early part of 2019, then dropped. But it was the number-one threat category for the year, up 463 percent from 2018. Hacktools detected in business also were way up—224 percent. Ransomware, always a high-profile threat, was technically down 6 percent."
"Perhaps most interesting to the PCMag audience is that the Windows PC platform, which many think of as the most under threat, may have become the safer platform to use. MacOS detections per endpoint went up from 4.8 in 2018 to 11.0 last year. That's double the attacks that were detected on Windows in 2019 (5.8). Malwarebytes attributes this to more Macs being sold, making the platform far more attractive to cybercriminals. At least one family of adware, named NewTab, had 30 million detections on Macs by Malwarebytes—and it hadn't shown up on the company's radar until late 2018. The report notes that while there are threats to iOS, there is no way to scan for them. A lot of it is "nation-state malware," meaning other countries spreading phone infections. And on Android? It says, "mere stats cannot fully explain the threat landscape for Android users in 2019." These treats included pre-installed malware (the manufacturer actually shipped the device with malware installed), trojans, and stalkerware."
