LEAP - A. Inqtana - A. Safari preference defect . It ’s been a toughened hebdomad for stalwart Mac supporter who crow about the platform ’s certificate compare to Windows . While the Mac remains a very secure and unchanging platform , these outcome demonstrate the motive for increased user awareness , Department of Education and security , according to several security analysts polled byMacworld . And the motivation behind these recent security incidents is money , some said .

“ This is all tie to the issue of cybercrime for lucre , ” say Stacey Quandt , enquiry film director for technology - research firm Aberdeen Group . “ We ’re seeing cybercrime as the equipment driver , and I think that no political program is safe from that . ”

Online criminals , Quandt contends , are only too glad to exploit any vulnerability they can regain for pull in access to entropy that they can use to turn a profit .

“ organization have firewall and corporate anti - virus software package already in topographic point , ” Quandt said . “ But consumers may not have the necessary shelter . Cybercriminals will attempt to work the weakest link in the string . ”

To that end , it ’s wise to add antivirus software , she tote up . “ Consumers take to take some protection and be mindful of the risks , ” Quandt add together .

Mac OS X has been a relatively secure surroundings with many substance abuser who are n’t as inured to security department issue as their PC vis-a-vis . As a result , Mac users may be especially susceptible to malware that depends on what ’s known as “ social engineering”—that is , taking vantage of a drug user ’s trust — rather than any specific exploit in the operating organisation .

That ’s what happened with the Leap - A malware , a potentially malicious plan that comes disguised as an image file . Once users expand the compressed archive and double - click it , Leap - A launches and instal itself on exploiter ’ system .

Education is key

“ This falls into the class of what we call ‘ user instruction and consciousness issues , ’ ” explain Scott Carpenter , director of security science lab for Secure Elements , a firm specializing in enterprise vulnerability management .

“ A large factor of this is the growing marketshare for the Mac . Is it being direct ? Yes , ” he said .

Carpenter agrees with Quandt ’s judgment that the ultimate driver for this is cybercrime — criminals attempting to exploit security department flaws or user naivete in fiat to gain access to personal selective information that they can then deal or apply to their own end .

Carpenter said that late example of Mac OS X exploits are “ only the tip of the iceberg lettuce . ” Carpenter distinguish that Apple will probably unloose a patch to fix the late document problem with Safari in which a preference setting can lead to the implementation of a malicious carapace script . But he said that exploiter can do more to protect themselves .

“ You need to have pecker on your system that protect against virus , you need to have update bandage for the system of rules and you need user education . When you have all three , you ’ll be able to cut down back on the problems , ” Carpenter said .

“ The worst error Macintosh users could make would be to become complacent in their security measure practices deceive themselves into thinking that the Mac operating system has no vulnerabilities . It does , ” aver Neil MacDonald , vice president and distinguished analyst for entropy security , secrecy and risk at Gartner Research , a company whose client list includes anti - virus software package makers . “ More will be found and more exploits will appear . ”

“ Best practices for patching should apply on the Mac as surely as on any Windows automobile . The same is true for personal firewall and antivirus software program configuration . E - mail and vane traffic needs to be filtered for malicious attachment and end - users need to be trained not to download and establish unknown software from unknown sources , ” MacDonald said .

‘ terpsichore in the aisle ’

Andrew Jaquith , senior psychoanalyst for the Yankee Group , has a decidedly unlike linear perspective .

“ I do n’t know if this is the form of things to come or not . I ’m sure the antivirus industriousness is dancing in the aisles about this , but it does n’t really take a hell of a lot of ingenuity to come up with what ’s been done so far , ” Jaquith said .

“ The Mac has a dear security department model — you do n’t have the blanket open administrative privilege wrick on by default like you do on Windows . I suspect that these recent effort will cause Apple and others to improve Mac OS X security even further , ” he added .

Should you run out and buy anti - virus software for the Mac ? Jaquith thinks not .

“ There just are n’t that many pieces of malware for the Macintosh , ” he articulate . “ If anything , you ’ll belike see more attempts to place security computer software in the future , rather than the factual operating system . ”

It ’s unsubdivided maths from Jaquith ’s linear perspective .

“ The Windows political platform has something like 150,000 documented instance of malware — computer virus , Trojan horses , worms and so on . Presuming the Mac has five percent of the marketplace , you ’d expect to see about 7,500 if there were equivalent security problems . It ’s so rarefied on the Mac , it ’s an infinitesimally little sample size . You simply ca n’t predict a movement based on that modest a numeral of information points , ” Jaquith pronounce .