Hackers turning criminal attention to Macs?

The issue of malware on Macs finally became serious in late 2007, says a report by the security vendor Sophos. Although Macs have been targeted before, Sophos argues that it is only recently that hackers have deliberately exploited problems with Macs in order to steal money. One of the main examples given is the OSX/RSPlug trojan, which Sophos notes was planted on websites in order to phish for financial information. Macs that visited the sites would receive the OSX/RSPlug-Gen file, specifically engineered for the Mac OS platform. Notably, the same vector was used to deliver the Zlobar-Fam trojan to Windows PCs, making for an effectively cross-platform incarnation of malware.

A senior technology consultant at Sophos, Graham Cluley, comments that while it will be a long time before Macs surpass PCs in terms of popularity, they are already attracting the attention of criminals due to growing popularity with shoppers. Mac users may have an opportunity here, Cluley suggests. Because serious malware is still a novelty on Macs, people may be able to deter a high level of attacks through their behavior.

"The Mac malware problem is currently tiny compared to the Windows one," he says, "so if enough Apple Mac users resist clicking on unsolicited weblinks or downloading unknown code from the web then there's a chance they could send a clear message to the hackers that it's not financially rewarding to target Macs."

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