As a new study revealed, over the past 12 months a large increase in malware targeting Mac devices was observed.
A report from Atlas VPN found that macOS malware development increased by 1,092% in 2020, as hackers increasingly target Apple devices, including the brand new M1 Macs.
See also: Hackers used 11 zerodays to infect Windows, iOS and Android
The new malware samples detected in 2020 reached 674,273, a huge increase from the previous year, when only 56,556 samples were detected.
The numbers show that 2020 was a bad year for macOS regarding malware, with the number of new strains reaching the highest levels ever. Atlas VPN also noted that the number is larger than all the new malicious programs detected since it began monitoring in 2012, which amounted to a total of 219,257 samples.
From 2012 to 2019, the highest number of new malware samples ever detected was 92,570 samples in 2018.
See also: Mac malware spreads via Xcode projects
“Contributing to this record threat growth is the fact that new malware is now easier than ever to create,” noted Rachel Welch, COO of Atlas VPN.
«Today, hackers don’t even need advanced programming skills, as they can buy a ready‑made malicious code, adapt it to their needs with a little coding and create an entirely new threat.»
The biggest concerns arose earlier this year, when the first malware targeting MacBooks with an M1 processor was discovered, just a few months after the arrival of the first Apple Silicon devices.
See also: Malware discovered running natively on the M1 chip
This is GoSearch22.app, a native version of the Pirrit virus for M1, which generates revenue through spam pop-up messages and advertisements.
Despite the increase in malware targeting macOS, Atlas VPN noted that the number of attacks targeting Windows remained much higher. The company found a record 91.05 million new malware samples targeting Windows in 2020. This translates to an average of 249,452 threats per day, meaning there were over 135 times more threats to Windows than macOS in 2020.
