The slow and steady evolution of cross-platform malware

The rise of the global Internet in the early to mid-2000s made online crime possible and profitable. The sheer size of Microsoft’s monopoly made Windows the only target that mattered for malware authors. And so for years all malware was Windows malware, which led some people to conclude that it would always be so. 

But a funny thing happened over the past decade, as Microsoft was smacked down hard in antitrust suits in the United States and the European Union: Its monopoly began to erode, and alternative platforms began to succeed. At the same time, Microsoft became much more effective at responding to security threats.

One year ago this week, I wrote a post titled Why malware for Macs is on its way. In it, I laid out the economic reasons why Mac malware was almost certain to begin appearing in greater numbers. In that post, I quoted a 2008 paper by security researcher Adam J. O’Donnell, who said: "I expect relatively wide-spread, monetized Mac malware when we see around 5-10% of the Internet population using Macs."