The tame Apple press has been claiming that the sane Apple press were being alarmist when we claimed that they were about to be swamped with a malware explosion.

Richard Gaywood pointed out that there hadn't been any updates to the MacDefender virus definitions on the Mac since 18 June. He claimed it as all proof that faith in Steve Jobs was all you needed to protect you from malware.

However it turns out that it might not have been a miracle that protected Macs. Brian Krebs's at Krebs On Security claims that the "Fake antivirus industry is down, but not out".

He said that hackers paid to foist junk security software on PC users have closed up shop in recent weeks. This was not because Jobs told them to close, but because the payment companies that the fake AV companies used have seen clampdowns, which have stopped them from making payments to their would-be clients. Another reason, Krebs said, was that Russian coppers arrested the co-founder of Russian online payment giant ChronoPay and a major player in the fake AV market.

It seems that it was employees of ChronoPay who were pushing the dodgy software although ChronoPay had issued a statement denying it. Krebs says police found "mountains of evidence that ChronoPay employees were running technical and customer support for a variety of fake AV programs, including MacDefender.

However Krebs warns that Apple fanboys are not safe yet. Fake AV is "ridiculously profitable" and once you find a few thousand stupid people you are basically printing money. Sounds like Apple's business model.