Malwarebytes issues a 2019 Mac Threat Detections report

Malwarebytes released the 2019 Mac Threat Detection Report, threats to the Mac platform are on the rise this year. Of the top 25 threat detections, six are for Mac platforms, accounting for 16% of the total. Although it may not seem serious, “when you consider the number of devices on which these threats were detected, the results become extremely interesting. Although the total number of Mac threats is smaller than the total number of PC threats, so is the total number of Macs. Considering that our Mac user base is about 1/12 the size of our Windows user base, that 16 percent figure becomes more significant.”

Image: Malwarebytes

Looking back in 2019, Mac malware broke into the top five for the first time. The first is Mac adware called NewTab, which accounts for 4% of the total cross-platform detection.

NewTab is adware that uses browser extensions to modify the content of web pages. It can be found in the form of Chrome extensions, with some older versions available as outdated Safari extensions.

This is followed by PUP.PCVARK, which accounts for 3% of the total detection.

These are a variety of potentially unwanted programs from a particular developer, most of them clones of Advanced MacKeeper. (This app was so notorious that its site was eventually blacklisted by Google Safe Browsing, which is not something that typically happens for PUPs.)