For years, the conventional wisdom was that Mac malware wasn’t really a problem. One reason was that the market share was too low to be a worthwhile target for attackers.
Of course, today it’s a completely different world. Mac is the fourth most popular personal computer brand, and as owners of premium brands, Mac owners are easy targets. Does that mean you need third-party antivirus software on your Mac, or are the built-in security protections enough? After some very thorough testing, we found…
There are two things that have long protected Mac owners from malware. First, our demographic is small enough that attackers would be much better off targeting Windows PCs. Second, Macs have built-in security measures that make them a very difficult target.
However, these days there is an abundance of Mac malware. The question is: Are the security measures built into macOS enough to protect you, or do you need third-party antivirus software?
mac world decided to throw over 130 pieces of malware at a standard installation of macOS 15.6.1 to see what the results would be. The malware was from a collection of known examples compiled by the nonprofit foundation Objective-See.
The results were encouraging. Indeed, if you grant permission and ignore the warning, macOS will allow malware to be installed.
By digging through malware archives and ignoring/bypassing protection screens, they were able to install third-party software that requests access to microphone, webcam, keystrokes, and other system features. During testing, we were allowed to install the NRKIH88 background feature, which acts as a Trojan horse. The infamous MacSecurity suite was installed to create a background feature, and the LamePyre malware created a mock Discord app that requested permission to record audio and video data. Eventually, my Safari start page was compromised and switched to a website selling Viagra.
However, our testing has shown that if you heed the warnings, you are protected from virtually all malware.
If you’re the type of Mac user who primarily sticks to the Mac App Store, downloads from developers you trust, and heeds Apple’s warning prompts, the protections built into macOS are usually enough to keep you safe. We have safeguards in place that do a great job of blocking or isolating the most obvious malware and raising red flags before suspicious software can cause any real harm.
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Photo by Dmitry Chernyshov on Unsplash
