Apple (NASDAQ: AAPL) is seeing a spike in malware infections from a Trojan called "Mac Defender," according to investigations conducted separately by Ed Bott of ZDNet and Jacqui Cheng of Ars Technica. A number of support specialists and Apple Store Geniuses have apparently observed an increase in malware instances on the Mac platform, though others have said that they have not noticed anything amiss. The clincher, however, is an internal memo with a Last Modified date of May 16 from Apple instructing Geniuses not to remove Mac Defender, together with explicit instructions "not to confirm or deny" the presence of the malware. It does appear that Mac Defender is indeed making the rounds.

Ironically, the increasing popularity of MacBook Pro and MacBook Air laptops is no doubt a factor that is attracting hackers to the OS X platform. To be clear, this is by no means an epidemic, though at least one Apple Certified Mac Technician interviewed by Ars Technica says that Mac Defender "appears to have impacted more of the general Mac-using public than all the previous Trojans I've dealt with."

While it is true that malware (and especially Trojans) can happen on any operating system, I have some thoughts about Apple's handling of Mac Defender in today's commentary. I would love to hear your thoughts on it too.

For more:
- see this article at PCWorld
- see this article at ZDNet
- see this article at Ars Technica

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