Historically, malware was never much of an issue with Macs because hackers had no interest making viruses that affected Steve Jobs’ delicious Apples. No, they only wanted to break the Windows of old man Gates. Well, those are well and truly bygone days of yore as a newly published report by Malwarebytes reveals that Mac threats have increased by a staggering 400% from 2018 to 2019, outpacing Windows by nearly two to one in threats per endpoint.

Gone are the "Macs don't get viruses" days

The 2020 Malwarebytes "State of Malware Report," took a deep dive into real-world threats for Android and iOS users, browser-based attacks and both Mac and Windows PCs.

It appears that most of the Mac threats were adware and were far outpacing Windows. The report suggests only one of the Mac threats in 2019 didn't involve tricking the user into downloading and executing something malicious. That incident was when cryptocurrency companies were targeted using a Firefox zero-day vulnerability as the malware infection vector.

The report reveals that more front and center malicious behavior from Mac files is also increasing year-on-year, employing inventive and deceptive approaches to escape Apple detection. Malware ‘breakthroughs’ impacting iOS, the report said, “may have the tech behemoth reconsidering whether they should allow anti-virus products on their beloved mobile devices.”

The Malwarebytes researchers concluded: “It’s time to take a good hard look at Mac security and finally get serious.”