Apple: Macs have been hiding antivirus in their systems for several months

Without saying so, Apple has implemented an antivirus solution in macOS as discreetly as possible. It is present from the Catalina version of the operating system. Like the Windows Security Center, it launches at startup and scans the system for intruders.

Macs are ultra-secureproof, they don’t needanti-virus ! This assertion of aficionados of the brand no longer holds. There are regular attack campaigns targeting Macs and even botnets consisting solely of computers of the brand. Today, Macs are even more affected by malware than PCs with Windows.

It must be recognized that Mac users are much less aware than PC owners and that they sometimes have an easy click on the pitfalls of the Web. While there has been an effective protection system built into Windows for many years, this was not yet the case with macOS…until now. Because the brand has not boasted about it but, for a few months, it has been taking advantage of updates to implant gradually and discreetly an antimalware solution in its OS. However, this antivirus is only available from macOS Catalina.

An arrival without fanfare

baptized XProtect Remediator, I’anti-malware runs quietly in the background. Discreet because it took only one journalist specialist thoroughly scans the processes of his Mac to detect it. Since June, he has been able to observe the gradual arrival of this anti-malware and has seen new elements appear gradually. The system specifically targets malware specializing in Macs. It comes in addition to two other protection modules.

Thus, there was already MRT, an element that regularly analyzed the file system in search of malware. There is also XProtect which is used to block any application who is not certified. But, unlike MRT, XProtect Remediator inspects the contents of the computer very regularly and loads itself into memory as soon as it starts up. Now that this is known, it’s hard to say that Macs are immune to viruses, although now it’s a little more true than before. But hush, you mustn’t say it…