Mac Virus

What is a Mac Virus?

A computer virus is any malicious or harmful piece of software that can get inside your computer without your informed permission and carry out unauthorized tasks that lead to different issues.

Another word for computer viruses is malware.

There are many different categories of malware such as Trojan Horses, Ransomware, Browser Hijackers, Adware, and Spyware that cause different kinds of harm. In most cases, however, the end goal of the virus is to illegally make money for its creators.

A Mac Virus is simply a virus program designed to attack Mac systems. Despite there being more viruses for Windows systems, it is not true that you can’t get a Mac computer infected with malware. Not very long ago, Mac viruses were rare, but during the last couple of years, their numbers have exponentially increased. Statistics show that only in 2017 the number of malware attacks on Mac has increased by nearly 300% relative to 2016. A similar increase has been seen in 2018 and 2019. This means is that the notion that Mac systems are invulnerable to malware is simply wrong. Like Windows computers, Macs, too, need protection from malware. The good news is that, with a reliable security tool and with the adoption of some safety browsing habits, most forms of malware would get stopped dead in their tracks before they could cause any harm to your computer.

How does a Mac virus infect you?

Mac viruses typically enter the computer without the victim’s knowledge, though sometimes the user may be tricked into giving their uninformed permission to download the infection. Most viruses use disguise to infiltrate a given system. They can be bundled with the installers of low-quality software, or software that is being illegally distributed, they could be attached to deceitful spam messages and are also oftentimes hidden behind too-good-to-be-true online offers and ads. There are extremely many methods used for malware distribution, but the majority of them can be avoided as long as the user makes sure to avoid interacting with suspicious and questionable online content and avoid visit unreliable sites and pages.o

What can a Mac virus do?

Depending on the type of Mac virus, there are many different problems that may befall your computer. Some viruses can be programmed to collect sensitive information such as banking numbers and online passwords from your system and send it to the hackers, who can use such data to steal your money or to blackmail and harass you. Other Mac viruses can corrupt or lock your files, leading to loss of important data. There are also viruses that can take control of the attacked computer and command it to complete different tasks that benefit the hackers in some way - a very common example of this is when the infected machine is forced to generate cryptocurrency that gets sent directly to the hacker’s online purse.

Some less harmful malware programs like adware and browser hijackers are known for causing browsing disturbance by filling the screen with ads, messing with the browser’s settings, and causing page-redirects to potentially unsafe sites.

In general, most Mac viruses operate silently and users typically don’t notice them. However, if your system is inexplicably slowed-down, experiences errors and crashes, or if there are browser changes you haven’t approved, it’s possible (if not likely) that you have malware in your Mac.

How to remove a Mac virus

In order to deal with any type of Mac virus, you must first know what the exact virus that has attacked you is. A full system scan of your computer with a reliable antivirus program can help you identify and remove the threat.

If you already know the identity of the Mac virus in your system, you can look for a removal guide for the specific threat on our site - we do our best to cover all new Mac threats and offer our readers removal instructions. Also, you can use the recommended anti-malware tool we link in our guides as an automatic assistant for the removal of the virus that’s in your Mac.