The move would not have surprised another researcher.

In a Tuesday interview, Chet Wisniewski, a security researcher with U.K.-based Sophos said Apple's update would either accelerate the race or the hackers would give up.

"If they keep doing [MacDefender], it implies they are succeeding at making money," said Wisniewski. "If Apple is able to stymie [MacDefender] 90% of the time or better, does that mean the bad guys will give up or up the ante?"

It seems that they've done the latter, which in James' eyes, wasn't that difficult.

"Apple's defense is signature-based," said James, talking about the antivirus tactic that relies on individual "fingerprints" of each piece of malware for detection. "Part of the new variant's code is the same, but part of it is different."