As InventHelp’s Invention Girl and the rest of world were riveted by reports of the dangerous Conficker worm over the past few weeks, Mac users enjoy the luxury of blowing off the hysteria. Even Invention Guy, a Mac loyalist, watched with amusement as I ran my antivirus program day after day to warn off any attacks on my precious PC.

According to security experts, those days of peace and solace amid PC panic may be coming to an end. Researchers have found computer malware invented specifically to target Mac computers and expect these attacks to become more common.

For years, Macs were protected by relative obscurity. As Macs grow in popularity, they become bigger targets for online thieves. Plus, the bad guys online know that Mac users tend to be proportionally more affluent than PC users and are tempted by potentially large payoffs.

A Trojan horse program, dubbed the “iBotnet,” has infected only a few thousand Macs, specifically Mac users who have downloaded pirated versions of the Mac software iWork. The malicious software is called a “botnet” because infected computers become part of a network that is controlled by the program’s author.

Mac’s botnet is significantly less of a threat than the highly publicized worm Conficker. Conficker, by comparison, was thought to have infected up to 10 million computers. Worms are different than botnets because they sneak into a computer and replicate without the owner’s knowledge.

In a statement, Apple said it works diligently to resolve computer security problems before they can manifest into larger issues.

Still, InventHelp’s Invention Girl expects to see antivirus companies invent computer protection software designed especially for Macs. Welcome to the Fear Club, Mac users!