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Cape Town - Just because you have an Apple Mac, it does not mean you are insulated from cyber threats, a new survey has found.
While PC users have long battled an exponential growth of computer viruses, worms and spam, global research indicates that Mac users could potentially face similar cyber attacks.
"Survey results showed that 24% of Apple desktop users and 10% of Apple laptop users encountered malware during the year," said the survey conducted by security firm Kaspersky Lab and B2B International.
It was careful to add that PCs faced a slightly higher incidence of malware at 32%, but that 'ransom-ware' was more prevalent on Macs at 13% versus 9% on PCs.
Ransom-ware jumped into news headlines in eastern European countries from about 2009. Cyber criminals would routinely take control of computers and coerce users to pay to unlock the machines.
Blissful ignorance
In 2010, Russian authorities arrested a group over the WinLock ransom-ware which displayed pornographic images on the screen and demanded payment via premium SMS.
However, the survey found that Mac users were generally unaware of the malware.
"For example, 39% of MacBook owners have never or hardly heard of ransom-ware, and 30% do not know about dangerous malicious programs that can exploit vulnerabilities in software," the survey said.
Part of the reason for the lack of knowledge may lie in the fact that the Apple ecosystem has created the impression of a closed environment which can potentially lull people into an imagined state of security.
This vulnerability was demonstrated by the Flashback.39 virus that infected over 600 000 Mac machines.
"OS X users have long lived in isolation from the dangers of the Internet so they may feel almost invulnerable, but as cyber threats today are expanding their areas of operation ever more widely, it is important to be prepared for them," said Vladimir Zapolyansky, vice president of Product and Technology Marketing at Kaspersky Lab.
Watch this News24 Live video on how malware can impact on your computer:
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