Security experts at Sophos are recommending home users should switch to Mac, warning of a huge wave of malevolent Trojan malware attacks.

The company has published new research into the past six months of cyber crime: the 'Sophos Security Threat Management Report Update'. This reveals that while there has been a vast drop in new viruses and worms, this has been over-compensated for by increases in other types of malware, as cyber criminals turn their attention to stealing information and money.

Trojans now outweigh viruses and worms by 4:1, compared with 2:1 in the first half of 2005. As Windows-based threats continue to dominate, the researchers are recommending home users should switch to Mac, in an attempt to protect themselves from malware.

Findings show that the most widespread threat from January to date is the Sober-Z worm, which, at its peak, accounted for one in every 13 emails. Netsky-P and Zafi-B took second and first place in prevalence, between them these three Trojans accounted for 43.5 per cent of all malware activity in the first six months of 2006. None of them affect any platform except Windows.

"While the first malware for Mac OS X was seen in February 2006, it has not spread in the wild and has not heralded an avalanche of malicious code aimed at Macs," the analysts state.

Read the full article here.

Read the Sophos report here.

Source: Macworld UK