Apple’s senior VPN of software engineering, Craig Federighi has said that the amount of malware targeting Mac OS users is “no longer acceptable”.
Federighi made the comment during testimony in the Apple vs Epic Games case, where the latter took Apple to court over the latter’s approach to the app store management, demanding that the company open its mobile platform to third-party app stores.
Unlike iOS, where Apple has full control over what makes it to the app store, MacOS is a far more open operating system. That, Federighi claims, has made it a lot more vulnerable, and a much bigger target among cybercriminals.
He told the court that for the Mac OS, the company found and removed 130 different malware samples, which had infected “hundreds of thousands” of systems. He added that Mac OS was now “regularly exploited” and that that was something the company tried to avoid with iOS.
“I think of it as the Mac is the car, you can take it off-road if you want, you can drive wherever you want,” said Federighi. “As that comes as a driver, you’ve got to be trained, there’s a certain level of responsibility to doing that. But that’s what you wanted to buy, you wanted to buy a car.”
“With iOS, you’re able to create something where children, even infants, can operate an iOS device and be safe in doing so. Really different products.”
He claims that Apple found just three kinds of malware infecting iPhones in 2020.
