An anonymous reader writes: Sophos, who recently launched a free anti-virus product for Mac home users, have released a chart showing the top threats detected on Apple computers.
The chart, said to be based upon some 50,000 reports of malware on Macs in the last two weeks, is dominated by threats that are Windows-specific, but some threats (such as Java attacks) are platform-independent and could affect both Mac and Windows computers. Two of the top 20 malware listed are specific Mac OS X Trojan horses (OSX/Jahlav and DNS Changer) which are typically planted by cyber criminals on BitTorrent sites, or planted on websites as sexy downloads or plugins to view videos.
Interestingly, the notorious Conficker worm appears in 19th position — Sophos speculates that as the Conficker worm is unable to infect Macs, the infections must be being found when Windows users share USB sticks with Mac colleagues.
"That's a good opportunity for Mac users to feel good about themselves — even if they couldn't have been infected by Conficker they can feel a bit smug that their Mac anti-virus was able to show up an insecure Windows user. :)", says a Sophos spokesman.