Apple Faces Hacking Attack Similar to Facebook

After Facebook, it is Apple's turn. The company announced Tuesday that it too was a victim of a sophisticated hacking attack.

Large online companies have been falling like dominoes after becoming victims of cyber crimes recently. Not even a week after social networking site giant Facebook announced that it had been subjected to a case of "sophisticated hacking," Apple announced Tuesday that it faced a similar situation.

Apple said in an official statement that a "small number" of its employees' Mac computers were attacked by hackers. The company also announced that it will release a software update to protect all Mac users from facing such a situation. Apple is currently working with law officers to find out the source of the so-called malware.

"The malware was employed in an attack against Apple and other companies, and was spread through a website for software developers," Apple said Tuesday.

For years now, Apple has prided itself on its security. It has boasted that its Mac computers are resistant to all such malwares and this has been one of the major selling points for the company. Hence, the announcement of a hack comes as a serious issue for both the company and its consumers.

This has been the third such attack on large online companies this month. First, Twitter announced its biggest security breach when passwords and email addresses of 250,000 users were reportedly stolen by hackers. The social networking site said that it had been dealing with growing concerns on cyber attacks for some time now but nothing as huge as this had ever affected the website.

Following that, Facebook announced last Wednesday that it had become a target of "sophisticated hacking" when a group of hackers gained access to some of its employees' laptops. The No.1 social networking site said that no information was compromised.

The attack occurred when some of their employees visited a website and immediately their computers were infected with malware. Reportedly, this took place last month.

"From our visibility, it (cyber crimes) is massive and it is growing exponentially over the years," said Dan McWhorter, Mandiant's managing director of threat intelligence.