The apple brand is worried. A senior Apple official says Mac malware has now surpassed the US giant’s tolerance level, noting security was the reason iPhones had to stay locked on the App Store, during testimony during his lawsuit with Epic Games, the publisher of Fortnite.
Apple’s head of software engineering, Craig Federighi, told a California court that Apple found current levels of malware “unacceptable”. “Today, we have a level of malware on the Mac that we do not find acceptable,” he answered questions from Apple’s lawyers.
Apple defends its practices after Epic Games sued it in the United States. As a reminder, the Cupertino company has withdrawn its Fortnite game from the App Store after the publisher has set up a direct payment system for the game currency, to bypass the 30% fee charged by Apple to developers. Epic claims Apple is too restrictive. The Apple-Epic case began on May 3. On Wednesday, the boss of the App Store, Phil Schiller, stressed that the App Store is focused on security and privacy from the start.
A bigger problem than on iOS
Craig Federighi says that since last May there have been 130 types of Mac malware – and one variant has infected 300,000 systems. He adds that Macs have a “significantly bigger malware problem” than iPhones and iPads, likening the Mac’s problem to a “never-ending mole game.” Macs can install software from anywhere on the internet, while iOS devices can only install apps from the Apple App Store.
The American security company Malwarebytes, which sells antivirus for Mac, says that malware for Mac now exceeds malware for Windows. But the company also notes that threats to Macs, mostly adware, are not as dangerous as threats to Windows systems.
“The Mac is a car. You can get off the road if you want, and you can drive anywhere you want. This is what you wanted to buy. There is a certain level of accountability required. With iOS, you wanted to buy something where kids can use it and feel safe. It’s really a different product, ”explains Apple’s head of software engineering. The latter also claimed that if Apple allowed iOS users to load apps on the side, things would change dramatically.
“No human review of the policy could be applied, because if software could be signed by people and downloaded directly, you could set up a dangerous application and no one would verify that policy,” he says.
Source : ZDNet.com
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