by Jason Snell
Apple’s new macOS malware scans are active
Howard Oakley at The Eclectic Light Company has observed that Apple’s macOS malware protection is now more active:
In the last six months macOS malware protection has changed more than it did over the previous seven years. It has now gone fully pre-emptive, as active as many commercial anti-malware products, provided that your Mac is running Catalina or later.
The XProtect Remediator software Oakley writes about actively scans for malware, in some cases several times a day, usually when the Mac is idle. This is in contrast to previous Apple scans for malware in macOS, which were more limited and primarily focused on new “quarantined” apps.
In true Apple fashion, of course, all of this scanning is completely invisible to the user. Oakley says that scans are now taking place on all Macs running macOS Catalina and later.