Amaya Toman Malwarebytes, the company behind the software of the same name, published this week a new study, according to which the detection of threats within the macOS operating system compared to Windows has increased significantly recently. According to published data, Mac threats account for 16% of Malwarebytes' total detections. This may seem like a relatively small percentage at first glance, but one must consider the size of the Mac user base compared to the number of Windows PC owners.
Considering that the user base of Windows PC owners is roughly twelve times the size of the macOS user base, these numbers are quite significant, according to Malwarebytes. While on Windows, Malwarebytes saw an average of 4,2 detections per device, on macOS it was 9,8 detections per device.
However, with the mentioned statistics, it is also necessary to take into account that it only contains data from devices with Malwarebytes software installed. For Windows PC owners, acquiring antivirus and other similar software is practically a given from the very beginning, while Mac owners tend to install this type of software only when they already have a certain suspicion of malware, according to Malwarebytes. This too can have a significant effect on the above numbers.
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Malwarebytes' report goes on to acknowledge that the overall threat detection rate for all Macs — not just those with the tool installed — is most likely "lower than this data sample." Regarding the composition of the malware, it was mainly adware and potentially unwanted programs that were detected, so it was a less serious type of malware than what is found on Windows.
