Will 2011 signal a Mac virus onslaught? Not so fast

30.12.2010
Is it really true that before Macintosh users are under siege by a flood of viruses and malware? McAfee announced recently that for people using Apple computers, as hackers will be increasingly attracted by growing Mac market share. It's not at all hard to .

The thing is, they also agreed back on , , , and , among many other dates in the past which I didn't bother excavating from Google. Remember that horrible Christmas of 2006, when all of your Macs broke simultaneously?

Me neither.

It's worth noting how computer malware comes into being. Unlike biological viruses, such as , malware doesn't spontaneously create new offspring. New viruses require the effort of "black hat" hackers, who try to create code that is easy to replicate, hard to remove, and does something to benefit of its creator.

That last bit is a crucial part of the malware environment. A few malware hackers write software attacks purely out of malice, but mostly . In theory, the more Mac users there are in the world, the more appealing they become as a target for hackers. This theory is pretty much the sum total of the analysis you'll see about Mac security on many general news sites.