Macworld Do Macs get viruses? Do Macs need antivirus software? The answers to these questions aren’t as simple as they might seem. In this article, we look at the dangers faced by Mac users, and the pros and cons of using Mac antivirus software. Historically, the Mac has been considered safe and secure for a number of reasons that we will go into below, but in recent years the consensus has fluctuated. In its 2020 State of Malware report, Malwarebytes said it saw “a significant rise in the overall prevalence of Mac threats in 2019, with an increase of over 400 percent from 2018.” The following year, the company found that overall malware detected on macOS decreased by 38 percent…

Macworld Do Macs get viruses? Do Macs need antivirus software? The answers to these questions aren’t as simple as they might seem. In this article, we look at the dangers faced by Mac users, and the pros and cons of using Mac antivirus software. Historically, the Mac has been considered safe and secure for a number of reasons that we will go into below, but in recent years the consensus has fluctuated. In its 2020 State of Malware report, Malwarebytes said it saw “a significant rise in the overall prevalence of Mac threats in 2019, with an increase of over 400 percent from 2018.” The following year, the company found that overall malware detected on macOS decreased by 38 percent…

Macworld iOS is at the heart of the iPhone experience. It’s the operating system on which everything else sits, while also delivering plenty of features and dedicated apps built by Apple itself. If you’ve ever wondered about when versions came out, how you can check the one you’re currently using, or how to update to the latest iteration, we have the answers. Here’s our whistlestop tour of iOS. iOS version history iOS made its debut in 2007 alongside the first iPhone. Although, when Steve Jobs held the little device aloft revealing it to the world for the first time, it wasn’t running iOS 1. Instead, it was reported by Apple to be powered by OS X, the software for the…

Macworld iOS is at the heart of the iPhone experience. It’s the operating system on which everything else sits, while also delivering plenty of features and dedicated apps built by Apple itself. If you’ve ever wondered about when versions came out, how you can check the one you’re currently using, or how to update to the latest iteration, we have the answers. Here’s our whistlestop tour of iOS. iOS version history iOS made its debut in 2007 alongside the first iPhone. Although, when Steve Jobs held the little device aloft revealing it to the world for the first time, it wasn’t running iOS 1. Instead, it was reported by Apple to be powered by OS X, the software for the…

Macworld Digital security firm Kaspersky has posted information about a recent cyberattack that targeted the iPhones of Kaspersky employees, which were infected with spyware that is part of a campaign the company dubbed, “Operation Triangulation.” Hackers were able to infect the iPhones using what Kaspersky called an “invisible iMessage with a malicious attachment” that can be activated without user interaction. Once installed, Triangulation was able to gather sensitive information (audio recordings, photos, geolocation, and more) and transmit that data to remote servers. All of this can occur without the user being able to notice. In a separate, more technical post, Kaspersky points out that “the most recent version of the devices successfully targeted is iOS 15.7.” An Apple representative told…

Windows users will want to make sure that they are running the latest version of iTunes, iTunes 12.12.9, in order to gain protection from a recently uncovered security vulnerability. Apple released iTunes 12.12.9 on May 23, and it fixes an issue that could allow malicious apps to gain elevated privileges to install malware on a Windows machine. While the vulnerability was addressed last week, Synopsys, the security company that discovered the problem, today shared some details on how it worked. iTunes had a privileged folder with weak access control, allowing a malicious person to redirect the folder creation to the Windows system directory, which could then be used to obtain a higher-privileged system shell.The iTunes application creates a folder, SC…