Creating malicious software that can assault Apple Mac computers is "trivial", a leading security researcher has claimed. Patrick Wardle, from security firm Synack, demonstrated a number of new types of malicious software that bypassed Apple's safety measures. In one example, Apple's personal iCloud service may control an assault. The threats are recognized to Apple, Mr Wardle stated, but the company has not but commented on the analysis. Mr Wardle was speaking at Black Hat 2015, an annual gathering of hackers and security professionals held in Las Vegas. He commended the company's efforts in working with him to make the platform more safe, saying that the Cupertino-primarily based agency "obtained safety". But he argued that Apple's elevated popularity means it's attracting additional consideration from cybercriminals who would commonly focus on attacking computers operating Microsoft's Windows. While Windows remains to be overwhelmingly attackers' platform of choice, antivirus firm Kaspersky Labs recorded a surge in Apple malware up to now couple of years. Among them, iWorm and WireLurker - the latter gaining lots of media consideration. The attacks he detailed were way more hidden than something that had been discovered to this point. Some parts of the vulnerabilities he and different researchers have found have been discovered "in the wild", he mentioned, the time period given to threats being exploited on actual customers. Mr Wardle's research focused significantly on one piece of Apple software program often known as Gatekeeper. It is a program which warns the person when they are opening a file that isn't from a "trusted" supply. Its default setting is to only enable packages downloaded from Apple's App Store and trusted third-party builders. But his methods demonstrated a method of circumventing this safety, utilizing "dynamic libraries" to inject malicious code into trusted applications. Mr Wardle had robust criticisms of Apple's in-built antivirus program, XProtect. The software program, which detects and blocks identified malware, warning the person in the process, might be tricked by essentially renaming the malware. The researcher also examined numerous totally different paid antivirus merchandise in the marketplace, and concluded that they endure comparable issues as XProtect. In a single case, he famous that some antivirus applications consider Apple's iCloud system - the net storage service it presents all customers of its merchandise - to be a "trusted" supply. This implies Mr Wardle was in a position to make use of iCloud to host an assault's Command and Control server, the part of an assault that controls the malware's operation. Implicit trust of iCloud servers is a problem. Mr Wardle to the BBC. Mr Wardle noted that Apple has been receptive to his analysis prior to now, but that the strategies he described had been still weak. He has created free software - called Objective-See - to handle the problems he outlined. A request from the BBC to Apple has gone unanswered at the time of publication. The issue is, in some circumstances their patches are inadequate, so I can bypass the patch. Concluding his speak, Mr Wardle stated his work was motivated by a love for Apple and its products. Cellan-Jones: Why ban WhatsApp?