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Mac Malware Brouhaha: Are Apple Users No Longer Safe?

18.05.2011
Mac users don't have to worry about , right? Well, for many years that's been true, although the reasons were always the topic of contentious debate between the faithful and various security researchers, many of whom predicted Mac security breaches would rise as Apple's share of the PC market climbed northward.

A new report suggests this may be happening now. ZDNet blogger Ed Bott reported Wednesday that a (among various aliases) is afflicting more Mac users than previously thought.

In the of two Wednesday posts, Bott includes a transcript of a phone interview he conducted with an unnamed AppleCare support representative, who claims that "many, many people" are falling for the MAC Defender attack.

AppleCare's call volume is four to five times higher than normal, the source says, and the majority of the calls are related to the malware outbreak.

In a post, Bott posts several MAC Defender-related user complaints that he culled from the Apple support forums yesterday.

"I found more than 200 separate discussion threads, many of them from people who have been tricked into installing this software and are desperately trying to remove it," writes Bott.