Apple - A Victim Of Its Own Success

The continued success and popularity of Apple and Macs has finally made it a tempting target for Malware authors. Windows users have become accustomed to all sorts of attacks and are more risk averse than the Mac users, who have had a justifiable false sense of security up to now. The party is unfortunately over for Mac users, and they can join the ranks of their fellow Windows compatriots into traversing the messy and ugly world of digital fraudsters.

Apparently a malware released for Macs, called Trojan.Fakefrag, is being disseminated through drive-by download attacks, a technique perfected for Windows and Internet Explorer users over the years. Trojan.Fakefrag is not your standard drive-by rogueware or scareware in that it pretends to cause the hard disk to collapse with the help of numerous persuasive messages asking infected users to buy a spurious anti-virus application.

It's hard to figure out the extent of the damage and how many Macs have been infected, but Apple is certainly taking their chances in affecting their profitability by refusing to help the victims. It's a timely wake-up call for Mac users and they should surf the web with the same caution as most Windows users have grown conditioned to.

Online users who use a Mac should demand stronger security from their banks, that goes beyond one-time passwords and use transaction data signing to protect against Man-in-the-Middle attacks.