Danger! Brazil leads the ranking of cyber attacks against macOS

Surprising digital security experts, Brazil now leads the ranking of cyber attacks malware targeted at the macOS system in Latin America.

Figures recently released by Kaspersky reveal a worrying situation, demonstrating the constant need for updates to software.

Malware attacks against macOS in Latin America scare experts

Image: Tranmautritam/Pexels

In the last twelve months, the Latin America witnessed approximately 1.8 million infection attempts that sought to take advantage of programs that were not up to date.

Of this amount, an impressive 359,320 were allocated specifically to Apple’s operating system. And what about Brazil? Unfortunately, the country played a prominent role with 119 thousand of these attempts.

The research also reveals that more than half of ransomware attacks occur due to the exploitation of flaws in software who did not receive the due updates.

Programs such as 7Zip, Java, Zoom, Mozilla Firefox and Google Chrome, frequently used in our daily lives, are obsolete on many devices in the region.

macOS users specifically face particular threats. One of them is MacSearch, a adware responsible for 18.68% of attacks in the region. It works by redirecting internet searches and displaying invasive advertisements.

Other relevant threats to this system are “Backdoor.OSX.Agent” and “Trojan.OSX.EmPyre”, both with clear malicious objectives.

Regarding Microsoft’s operating system, the Windows 10 continues to be preferred in Latin America, being present in approximately 71.91% of computers.

However, there is a latent concern regarding the finding that Windows 7 is still present on 23.16% of machines. The problem is that this is a system that stopped receiving updates more than three years ago.

Finally, it is worth highlighting that Brazil’s cyber scenario is even broader. Additional research from the Kaspersky identified that Brazil not only leads attacks on devices mobile devices in Latin America, but which is in the top 5 global nations targeted by malicious actions on the web.