This all depends on how successful this has been for the criminals. At the same time they've targeted Windows users (actually, from what I've researched - not just "Windows" users, but more specifically Windows XP users, the attacks I've seen would be very unlikely to fool someone running Vista or Windows 7, as the graphics displayed don't match those Windows versions).
Now this hasn't got much to do with infections, more to do with "how many people gave credit card details?" If this is significantly fewer than Windows (XP) users (and lets fact it, there are A LOT more Windows users, Windows users could fall for this in far less often "per head" and still make the criminals far more money) then criminals might decide it isn't worth the effort. After all, these people are lazy - otherwise they'd have a legitimate business.
It does seem they are expecting Google to get their act together (and about time) as they are looking for new ways to get this stuff in front of people (latest being Facebook).
So what happens on the Mac is very dependent on what happens elsewhere. I think it likely that Apple will get far more serious about stopping this stuff. Probably the thing that will be a critical factor is how many users move from Windows XP to Vista/Windows 7. These platforms are harder to target, because with the more customisable UI the criminals will find it harder to mimic their "look and feel" (remember these aren't exploits against the OS, they convince the user to install them, they'll find that much harder if they "don't look right").
But trying to see any future of Mac malware is impossible, there are too many variables. One thing that would really help is if Apple introduced "themes" for Mac OS X - especially if they randomly assigned them to users rather than had a fixed default.
Where’s Mac malware headed? F-Secure’s Chief Research Officer Mikko Hypponen and Security Advisor Sean Sullivan share their thoughts.
Highlights:
- Mac usage share of around 15% in the US offers a lot of potential ‘victims’ and it’s now attractive to malware authors
- There’s currently a boom, but a bust will follow as Google addresses the SEO (Search Engine Optimization) image poisoning problem
- The ‘Mac faithful’ will claim that the malware attack is over and that it was nothing more than a phase
- The social engineering tricks used on Mac now have been well developed and tested on the Windows ecosystem and earning criminal gangs tens of millions of dollars per month
- The bad guys are targeting ‘low handing fruit’
- Current malware attack is little more than a ‘light show’ used to trick users
- The next infection vector is probably about a year away and is likely to again be social engineering scams, and maybe even ransomware that encrypts the user’s documents and demands payment for decryption
