The truth about Macs and malware
The threat of a general pandemic started by a small group of not very smart people hitting themselves over the head with hammers is non-existant. That is, stupidity is not infectious, but fear is.
Do you pirate software? Are you worried by recent reports of multiple trojans (iServices A, iServices B) that target Macs and OS X?
The truth about Macs and malware
And here is the unvarnished sarcastic truth about Macs and malware from the wordsmiths at Roughly Drafted:
The set up—For more than a half decade, the Windows-enraptured tech media has been banging on a drum about the imminent arrival of Mac viruses. As proof of this coming wave, they always cite researchers employed by anti-virus vendors who recount vulnerabilities found in Mac OS X or occasionally trojan horse malware designed to dupe Mac users into manually installing software that intentionally causes problems.
And, the punch line—This is like warning the population of the threat of a global pandemic outbreak based on press releases issued by a homeopathic group concerned that isolated reports of individuals hitting themselves with a hammer might portend a greater public health crisis, unless more people coat themselves with 30x ferrum phos obtained from one of their practitioners.
Fact: There is not a single, self-replicating (ie infectious) piece of malware that targets the Mac, period. ’nuff said.
If you answered no to pirating and, well, kind of sorta maybe about being worried, keep your Mac up to date and do not install software from unvetted strangers.
If you answered yes to pirating and yes that you are worried about the potential consequences of your actions, then you need to do two things: 1.) download and use SecureMac’s trojan utility and 2.) stop pirating software.
Oh, and it couldn’t hurt either the pirates or the worriers to get some antivirus software—I use VirusBarrier X5 (review), but clamXav (free and open-source) will do you just fine—and set it up to run automatically in the middle of the night and don’t forget to check the logs in the morning…
What’s your take?
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January 30th, 2009
I think the high horse MAC users are in denial.
January 30th, 2009
Can you point to a specific threat that we are in denial about? Over 15 million Windows PCs have become infected with a new—one of tens of thousands—virus. Can you point to a single Mac virus? How about a worm? Can you provide us with a link to a worm that targets OS X, now or in the past?
It’s one thing to say we’re in denial, but quite another to back it up with any concrete evidence.
Show us the beef (not just the bull)…
January 30th, 2009
My take is that a little common sense is in order.
I see basically two very vocal camps, and neither has the right approach.
One camp is a bunch of unjustifiably smug but dumb Mac users who do pirate excessively and don’t care one whit about security boasting that Macs are invincible.
The other camp is a bunch of unjustifiably smug but dumb Windows users who think Macs have exactly the same (lack of) security that Windows has and will be just as overrun with malware as Windows if Macs’ market share increases.
The truth is that Macs are more secure by design. Anyone who’s worked with Unix-like systems and understands sudo knows that privilege separation is one of the best defenses against malware.
But the other truth is that no system is invincible, and ignorant users are the weakest security link in the chain.
So instead of Mac users saying “Hey, let’s not pirate stuff. Maybe we should vet the stuff we download,” we get a bunch of Mac users saying “Oh, no… what antivirus should I run?”
Antivirus won’t stop stupidity, unfortunately.
April 1st, 2009
“Fact: There is not a single, self-replicating (ie infectious) piece of malware that targets the Mac, period. ’nuff said.”
This is proof that the writer is totally ignorant to this issue. The only malware that self-replicates are worms. Viruses DO NOT self replicate, they are replicated by being activated by another program or script that they are attached to. There are also many other forms of malware that are not self-replicating. There are way too many people who are completely clueless trying to wax expert on this issue. As a result, people read blogs like these over and over and get dumber and dumber every time.
People, its not the Operating System. IT’S YOU!