Malwarebytes: malware detections on the Mac dropped 38% last year : Apple World Today

A new report from Malwarebytes says that Mac detections in 2020 fell a “fair bit”  from the all-time high the company that makes anti-malware software previously reported for 2019, with overall detections decreasing by more than 37%.

This was primarily due to a drop in detections of adware and potentially unwanted programs (PUPs), while malware (mostly backdoors, data stealers, and cryptocurrency stealers/miners) increased by more than 61%. Malwarebytes saw its highest number of Mac detections in the U.S. This is no surprise, as the U.S. is the company’s largest market. However, malware detections only represented 1% of the total Mac detections in the U.S.=S last year. 

Similarly, in most of the countries with a large number of detections— Australia, UK, Canada, France, and others—malware made up less than 55 of the total detection count, according to Malwarebytes. Conversely, a number of countries clustered mostly in Asia and Europe saw a much higher percentage of malware, such as South Korea (18.1%), Ukraine (16.3%), Norway (15%), and the Czech Republic (14.9%). Other top contenders included Greece, Malaysia, United Arab Emirates, Indonesia, Taiwan, and Austria.