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from www.channelnews.com.au – Apple users are reporting a major jump in the sheer number of malwares posing as anti virus software going by the name ‘Mac Defender,’ ‘Protector’ or ‘MacSecurity’ that are hitting their screens.

The affected systems include Mac OS X 10.4, 10.6, 10.5.

In many cases it informs users of a virus in the system and look for payment and the ultimate goal is to obtain credit card details to remove the fake “virus” that often appear with pop up porn sites.

It looks to scare users into coughing up cash to get rid of phoney viruses which are difficult to remove as they are already running, in many cases.

“I have the Mac Defender virus, got it late last night on an image search. I trashed as much as I could, but unpleasant unwanted sites keeps popping up on Firefox” one victim wrote on Apple’s discussion forum.

“A recent phishing scam has targeted Mac users by redirecting them from legitimate websites to fake websites which tell them that their computer is infected with a virus,” Apple confirmed on its support forum yesterday.

It has also confirmed it will deliver a Mac OS X software update that will automatically remove Mac Defender malware and its known variants in the coming days.

The update will also help protect users by providing an explicit warning if they download malware in the future.

It has published a step by step ‘How to avoid or remove Mac Defender malware’ page on its support forum on Apple.com.

AppleCare support representatives revealed the number of malware-related support calls has spiked recently although the company itself failed to comment on the issue until now.

And it seems Apple Macs are particularly vulnerable to such malware attacks and are “far easier to infect than a Windows machine these days,” Ty Miller, chief technology officer from Pure Hacking said earlier this week.

“99 percent of malware is still developed for the Windows platform since malware writers want to get the biggest bang for their buck when they release their malicious software,” he said.