With smarter AI and more sophisticated malware targeting Mac users, cybercriminals are upping their match in 2025, leaving defenders in a race to keep up.
The time 2025 may indicate the turning point for AI’s position in security, according to a recent statement from Malwarebytes. Although relational AI tools like ChatGPT have experienced a minor decline since their comeback, their capabilities have mostly been limited to assisting with programming and study tasks.
However, the development of agentic AI, an artificial intelligence that can act independently and solve challenging problems, is expected to alter this active.
A double-edged weapon
Agentic AI represents a step beyond conceptual tools, giving soldiers the ability to manage time-intensive jobs like system surveillance, patching vulnerabilities, and identifying threats. Agents may help close the continual abilities gap in security.
For example, AI agents had control over risk monitoring, handle real-time anomaly tracking, and promote patch deployments without constant human oversight.
Nevertheless, the same technology was motivate adversaries to scale operations. Cybercriminals properly use agentic Artificial to carry out simultaneous ransomware attacks, craft advanced phishing campaigns, and yet breach networks freely.
Ransomware’s changing techniques
Ransomware continues to dominate as the most attractive crime, with a 13 % increase in attacks in 2024. The Dark Angels group received the largest ransom ever paid in 2024 from an unidentified Fortune 50 company, amounting to$ 75 million.
However, the ransom habitat is shifting, with big players like LockBit and ALPHV losing impact and smaller, “dark horse” groups stepping into the limelight.
These smaller groups have democratized ransom, making tools and techniques more accessible to fraudsters. As a result, problems are not only increasing but likewise becoming faster and more powerful.
Many today rely on cunning, executing full strike bars, from gaining access to encrypting information, within hours. This pattern is further exacerbated by the fall of sophisticated information stealers like Poseidon and on MacOS.
These thief use hacktivist schemes to hack into networks and spook up passwords and cryptocurrency wallets.
Laptops are increasingly targeted
In recent years, mac has seen a significant increase in targeted attacks, correlating with its growing implementation in personal and corporate surroundings. The development of powerful threats like the Banshee macOS Stealer in 2024 highlighted the product’s vulnerability to superior attacks.
When it comes to AI, phishing schemes are getting harder to spot, and Mac people aren’t immune. Fraudsters are using AI to build emails that resemble communications from Apple, financial institutions, or office IT teams.
Email patterns can be analyzed by AI tools to produce very encouraging messages with personalized details that appear to be authentic.
However, AI-driven malvertising campaigns maintain that false ads promoting common Mac software, like productivity apps or safety tools, appear of search results. Traditional red flags like bad grammar and basic messages no longer function as reliable warning signs because AI is refining these attacks in real-time.
How to protect against AI challenges
To address the rising threats, security teams need to reevaluate their strategies. By automating risk monitoring and answer, using AI-driven resources can help bridge the skills space.
Enhancing terminal security is also necessary, especially when sophisticated tools can identify suspicious behavior. Another focus is to block remote desktop methods and make tools more vulnerable to exploitation, before securing access points.
Lastly, staff training is still important because to be ahead of intruders, teams must be trained to recognize hacking attempts and social executive strategies.