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28 March 2024

Virus alert: Apple fans tool up for 2013 Mac attacks

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By Staff

Downloads of Hotspot Shield, one of the world’s leading malware deterrents, rose 1524% among the Apple Mac community in 2012, with users determined to arm themselves against a repeat of last year’s Flashback Trojan incident.

The revelation comes as the CEO of AnchorFree, the creator of Hotspot Shield, warned that the much-publicised  attack, which exploited a Java loophole to infect 600,000 users, was just the beginning.

“The Flashback outbreak was a real wake-up call for Mac users and a vivid indicator of  things to come,” said David Gorodyansky.

“The way a particular loophole was seized upon to massive, destructive effect will undoubtedly encourage those intent on making life miserable for Mac users to step up their game in the coming year. In addition to copycat attacks, a host of more powerful follow-ups are surely just around the corner. Unsurprisingly, Mac users are worried and that has been reflected in the huge surge we experienced for Hotspot Shield downloads throughout the year.”

Hotspot Shield provides desktop and mobile users with protection from 3.5 million malware, phishing and SPAM sites. To date, Hotspot Shield has been downloaded by more than 100 million people from 190 countries worldwide.

Available on Apple iOS, and Android devices, in addition to desktop PCs and Macs, Hotspot Shield also compresses data during mobile phone use to speed up the browsing experience and more than double the amount of Web content users can access under their mobile data plans.

In just over a year, Hotspot Shield products have saved mobile users more than 21 million megabytes of data, protected users from more than 630 million pieces of malware and encrypted more than 15 billion page views. Hotspot Shield was an early pioneer in protecting Mac users from the Flashback virus in 2012 and remains one of the most popular Mac security apps worldwide.