Mac platform faced 58 malware threats from Q2 to Q4 2011

Security lab F-Secure released its 2011 Mac Malware Summary earlier this week, noting that Mac OS X platform endured 58 separate malware attacks from April 2011 to December 2011. Of course, this numbers couldn’t be compared with multiply attacks that Microsoft's Windows operating system experienced over the same period.

The firm counted only unique variants of malware that occurred during the second, third and fourth quarters of 2011. "We prefer a more conservative approach when counting malware. The more generic and family based, the better," the report noted.

According to the summary, Trojan-downloaders made up the bulk of the attacks with 29 variants during the period. Backdoor malware was the second-most common with 15 separate instances detected. June was the busiest month for Mac malware with 12 known threats, followed by October with 11 instances.

Last spring, a malware emerged that billed itself as MACDefender anti-virus software. Another Mac OS X trojan was discovered posing as a phony Flash Player last September. An updated version of the software even sought to disable Apple's built-in anti-malware capabilities. To prevent malware attacks, Apple added a daily malware definitions check to Mac OS X last year. In some cases, updates to the malware definitions have managed to head off threats before they became functional.