It used to be, back when I was in high school, that it was fashionable to hate Microsoft, or M$ as the company was known. Nowadays, Apple is increasingly the target of silly op-eds, message board rants and, it turns out, malicious hackers. Since October, F-Secure security researchers have found 100-150 variants of a Mac-targeting malware program; last year, only one or two of these programs were found. Apple sold 2.1 million macs this past quarter to 1.1 million last year. Coincidence?
Poor Apple. The more successful it becomes, the more it finds itself in harm’s way. A sort of “more money, more problems” conundrum.
For the record, in my six or so years of using a Mac, I’ve never run into any sort of malware, be it spyware or virus or trojan. Just be smart about using the Internet and you’ll avoid all that nonsense.
Apple’s rising popularity lures hackers [Financial Times]