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The new Global Threat Report paints a dire picture for Microsoft as Windows continues to be the most malware infested and macOS the least malware.
On Tuesday, Elastic Security Labs released a cybersecurity report that looks at popular operating systems and the threats they face. The company also includes forecasts and recommendations for corporate clients.
As usual, macOS is at the bottom of the list, ahead of even Linux, which means the least number of security threats. The numbers show that 54% of all malware infections were found on Windows, 39.4% on Linux, and only 6.2% of infections on macOS.
Trojans were the cause of the majority of infections, which accounted for 80.5%. A Trojan is a piece of software that pretends to be safe but hides malware inside that is activated when the user runs the program.
Researchers have found that MacKeeper poses the biggest threat to Mac users as a malware attack vector. MacKeeper has a bad history of aggressive advertising, and some versions left Macs vulnerable to malware attacks.
MacKeeper is often considered malware or used to distribute it.
The report mentions that MacKeeper can be misused by attackers because it has wide permissions and access to macOS processes and files.
He also warns that macOS crypto miners could become more common malware for the Apple platform. Cryptomining malware or “cryptojacking” is malware that uses a computer to secretly “mine” cryptocurrencies without the consent of the user.
Mining uses most or all of the computer's resources, such as GPU or CPU performance, which slows down the system.
Apart from these specific references, macOS was barely mentioned in the report. This shows that Mac users have nothing to worry about when it comes to malware infection.
Craig Federighi, head of software development at Apple, said in 2021 that the platform has an unacceptable level of malware, or at least worse than iOS. But macOS has built-in user protections, including antivirus software, app checks from well-known developers, and file system encryption.
