Security Firm Warning: Malware Targeting iOS And Macs To Rise In 2016

Given the fact that many sites have reported malware apps this year, everybody is keeping an eye out for vulnerabilities in their security systems. According to Symantec, 2016 will see a rise in these attacks because of “free from malware” note.

The amount of exceptional OS X computers infected with malware was seven times higher than in all, its research found. It would seem that even the mobile devices are at risk.

“Should Apple platforms continue to increase in popularity, the number of cybersecurity threats facing Apple users will likely grow in parallel”, he added. In the first months of 2014 occurred an attack so heinous, that it made all users question the company’s capabilities of protecting their assets.

“A rising number of threat actors have begun developing malware created to infect devices running Mac OS X or iOS”, the report concluded. The number of threats is significantly small compared to Android but the risk of infection has increased over the years, mainly on device that are jailbroken.

In its “Looking Forward: the 2016 Security Landscape”, report, FireEye outlined a future in which Apple products will become a greater focus for cybercriminals. Attackers may also opt to abuse certificates and application programming interfaces (APIs) to distribute iOS malware.

“The perception has been for a number of years that Apple computers are safer than Windows”, said Satnam Narang, security specialist at Norton.

But soon, Apple devices are about to get the same kind of unwanted attention from cybercriminals.

“We have already seen attacks on infrastructure and in 2016 we can expect this to continue to increase”.

“These changes introduce bigger attack surfaces into the more traditionally hard to secure environments”, Kaura said. “As consumers buy more smartwatches, activity trackers, holographic headsets, and other Internet of Things (IoT) devices, the need for improved security on these devices will become more pressing. Motivations for critical infrastructure attacks are both political and criminal, with nations and political organisations operating cyber-warfare campaigns, and criminals attacking for profit or ransom”, he said.

Malware authors are increasingly “finding ways into Apple’s walled garden, and that will ramp up next year”, Bryce Boland, chief technology officer at FireEye. Reports of malicious App Store apps have cropped up in recent months, while bug-bounty hunters recently offered million to identify weaknesses in iOS 9.