Authored By:
Andy Greenberg, Forbes Staff
The security world has long cautioned Mac users that the lack of malware targeting their machines has been a function of cybercriminals’ focus on Windows’ larger market share, not of Apple’s brilliant security. So when today’s espionage-focused hackers now set out to infect networks in highly targeted attacks, one human-rights group is warning that the illusion of security Mac users once enjoyed is a thing of the past.
At the SecTor conference in Toronto last week, security researcher Seth Hardy of the University of Toronto’s Citizen Lab research center warned that 2012 has seen a significant increase in new variants of targeted, Mac-focused malware reported to the group by the human rights organizations it seeks to aid. Over the year so far, it’s seen five new types of espionage malware for Apple’s operating system appear, compared with just one in 2011 and none in prior years.
