Kaspersky Belied Secure Apple Myth

Anti-virus company, Kaspersky, has seen the number of malicious programs detected in the UK increase massively over the last year, up from 125,000 per day to 200,000, including the malware which targets Apple devices. This can disprove the theory that the Apple’s kit is totally secure.

As the virtual landscape is constantly changing for consumers and businesses, while new devices and various platforms become more commonplace, the security experts of Kaspersky say that criminals keep looking to capitalize on your weaknesses.

Overall, an independent report showed that Kaspersky Lab managed to detect and block more than 1.5 billion web-based attacks within the last year, along with catching over 3 billion infected files. The past year has clearly shown the strong inclination of cybercriminals to steal information from all digital devices of both individuals and companies – PCs, Macs, smartphones and tablets. Indeed, this was one of the most important trends of 2012. In addition, the company observed a strong rise in the number of threats which affect all popular software environments, with the key finding being the remarkable growth of Mac-specific malware, as well as increase of threats targeting the Android platform.

The provided statistics has helped push the United Kingdom to the “high risk group” category, depending on the number of online attacks and malicious files. For instance, one of the main incidents of the year appeared to be the Flashback botnet, which was built of 700,000 infected Apple computers, whose owners strongly believed that the Mac OS X platform was invulnerable to exploitation.

In the meantime, Android devices also saw an increased security threat – this is despite Google trying to protect its users with its own anti-malware technology. The reports say that there was rapid growth in Android malware, with roughly 99% of all newly discovered mobile malware targeting the handsets with Google’s OS.

Talking about the browser-based attacks, Kaspersky has detected 4 million a day within 2012. Apparently, cyber criminals were looking to exploit vulnerabilities in various software. For instance, Java was the most frequently attacked (50% of all attacks), followed by Adobe Reader (28%).