Apple Quietly Recommends Antivirus Software For Macs 484
Barence writes "After years of boasting about the Mac's near invincibility, Apple is now advising its customers to install security software on their computers. Apple — which has continually played on Windows' vulnerability to viruses in its advertising campaigns — issued the advice in a low-key message on its support forums. 'Apple encourages the widespread use of multiple antivirus utilities so that virus programmers have more than one application to circumvent, thus making the whole virus writing process more difficult.' It goes on to recommend a handful of products." Reader wild_berry points out the BBC's story on the unexpected recommendation.
a way to make money (Score:4, Interesting)
is this a scare tactic for apple to push some payfor software and get people to buy it. or have apple started to loose confidence in their operating system? or even worse, do they know something we dont? are they expecting an attack?
Re:a way to make money (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:a way to make money (Score:5, Interesting)
Maybe the Mac has starting to reach that point where virus writers and security aficionados have enough a base to target their efforts?
Perhaps, but I am still waiting to see a real "virus" that hits MacOS. There's been a few trojans (such as the one mentioned in TFA), but nothing that qualifies as a virus yet as far as I know. It is likely much harder to write a real virus (rather than a trojan) for MacOS than Windows as you'll need to find a privilege escalation exploit (need I say, without local access) in one of the standard services first, all of which tend to be pretty robust and having a core that comes from the open source and Unix worlds... as far as I know, there aren't any such exploits known right now.
Trojans can of course still be fairly nasty, as there's a lot of stupid users in the world (of any OS)
Disclosure: I do use MacOS X as my primary OS at home, but I'm definitely not a "fanboy" (I also have Linux systems at home and use primarily Windows at work - I consider myself "OS agnostic").
Re:a way to make money (Score:4, Interesting)
I don't know why you want to wait, it will happen in time. This is not meant as a critique of Apple in anyway, I am of the belief that over a long enough time frame, with enough market penetration, Mac viruses will become more common. It's not that Macs are inherently that much more stable, rather the market penetration is such that it makes more sense for people creating malicious viruses to focus on the PC instead. Why create a virus that only hits 7% of computers when you can hit one that hits 85% of computers?
I also would wager that the Mac OS is probably a bit more secure than Windows, because well, it's Windows...that being said if there's enough code there will be mistakes that can be exploited that's the nature of the human element.
Re:a way to make money (Score:5, Insightful)
I wish people would stop parroting this fallacy all the time. Market share has nothing to do with how easy it is to break into a system.
If you have something like windows where security is bolted on after the fact, and OS that was never meant to be a multi-user OS connected to the internet (all these were added as features later on and done poorly) then you will have a system that is much harder to keep secure.
UNIX on the other hand was designed from day one to be networked multi-user OS, and security and separation of concerns was there from beginning.
Re:a way to make money (Score:5, Insightful)
A way to make news. (Score:3, Insightful)
Agreed, however this is still news because the platform is under such control by Apple. They could quietly and easily put not only hardware and software in place. But implement more effective procedures in their software process to make security tighter. And we wouldn't be the wiser.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
I think he neglects to mention an underlying assumption that no software is perfect, and given enough time and effort, the chances of finding a security flaw that can be exploited is greater than zero in ANY piece of software.
I don't believe this to be true if enough focus on security is made.
Software can be made secure at the expense of functionality. Now this doesn't ever solve the problem of local access, but if you made your OS into a glorified terminal server, you can prevent automated attacks by restr
Re:a way to make money (Score:5, Informative)
UNIX on the other hand was designed from day one to be networked multi-user OS, and security and separation of concerns was there from beginning.
Oh, this just makes me laugh. Operating system the first Internet worm ran on? UNIX. It wasn't until the mid '90s that people started saying 'UNIX Security' without laughing.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Mid 90's? so win 95? how did the security of Unix compare to the security of windows 95?
Maybe they stopped laughing at Unix security because they found something else that truly showed how bad security could be. :)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)
Windows security model (Score:5, Interesting)
No, the Windows problem was that to migrate from DOS + Windows shell to Windows NT, was a slow, painful 10 year process with LOTS of growing pains. Windows 4.x series (Win95, Win98, WinME) were supposed to be a singular OS before the transition to NT, and was created because the uptick to NT 3.51 was low because of the RAM requirements. The original plan was 3.1 for home users, NT 3.1 for "Workstations," and Win32s was released to let people target both OSes.
As we moved through Win 3.11 w/ Win32s -> Win95 -> Win98 -> WinME, the NT systems grew in popularity. Lack of advanced DirectX support prevented NT 4.0's being the transition, Win2K was close but price kept it out, and WinXP finally merged the OSes. By that point, it'd been 8 years or so since the first 32-bit programs came out. The ones targeted mass market, originally Win32s, and later Win95/NT4 libraries, were generally assuming the consumer version. On the consumer Windows, there WAS NO SECURITY model, so it was common for applications to assume lots of access. This meant that while NT 4.0/Win2K gained market share and had the security model from the NT system, the security wasn't used and users had full access to the drive, because the alternative was broken software.
To not break applications from 1995 - 1998, in the early 2000s we were still shipping OSes with most of the system being world writable.
So while Windows possessed a security model that could work, in practice, it was never implemented, because it required locking down the system on each system, so instead of protecting OS directories, we used the "bolt on" security like Group Policies, etc., to prevent users from doing things. I worked with a bunch of Citrix systems in the late 90s, and we were able to lock down those machines, because you were only talking about locking down a single machine or two, and the defaults were more reasonable. There was PLENTY of software that wouldn't run under Winframe 1.x/2.x gold (2.0 never shipped, Microsoft pulled the license, then bought it to ship Terminal Server and Citrix moved the addons into Metaframe), not because it required the NT 4/Win95 libraries (we could always confirm that using 2.0 Gold that was NT 4 based), but because it made assumptions about access that was reasonable for Win 3.11/Win95, but not NT based OSes. Citrix, targeting big budget Enterprises could get away with that, Microsoft reaching the entire market could not.
I assume that this has been fixed in Vista, but I haven't used it, I switched to Mac OS X in the mean time.
Re:a way to make money (Score:5, Informative)
All viruses require a reasonable level of market share to operate, because one of the principles they rely upon is a network effect, and you just plain cannot get a network effect without a decent market share. So marketshare is, very much, a pre-requisite for a successful virus. It's not the only one, but when people say "Mac OS X hasn't been attacked yet because it doesn't have enough marketshare", they're right. That's one fundamental reason. And unless you can show that any other reasons apply, it's likely to be the only reason.
Fair point. However, Mac OS X has far more market share than something like Aros. We're talking somewhere above 8% of the market right now. That's an appreciable install base and certainly worth targeting. By comparison, the Witty worm [schneier.com] targeted (and infected) an install base of only 12,000 systems. So sure - install base might be a factor. But it is hardly the only one.
There's little reason to believe that Mac OS X is protected from viruses by anything other than its low market share at this point. There's not a large enough group of users for network effects to take over. It is not an inherently secure operating system. The default user is generally set up with administration privileges, and it just takes a buffer overflow or other ordinary vulnerability in a client application like a web browser plug-in for a virus or worm to have complete access to the user's files, and enough access to be able to modify many of the applications the user is likely to run.
Fundamentally, Mac OS X has the same problem as Windows, and the same problem the "run-everything-as-root" Unixes did in the eighties and early nineties: too much functionality available to the default user. To fix this, you need to change the model somewhat. The very least Apple could do is set Mac OS X up so that the installer actively discourages setting up the default user as an administrator.
Wait a minute here. Correct me if I'm wrong, but my impression is that the "administrator" setting of an account allowed sudo access. That's a little different than running as root. Is there something else going on in the Mac userland?
It should also be noted that we've heard these warnings [linuxinsider.com] before. The doomsday scenario has yet to come to pass. And while I agree that some of the perception of imperviousness is misplaced, I am also inclined to believe there's a bit more at work here than some critics want to believe.
Re:a way to make money (Score:5, Interesting)
Good points all, but I think you forgot one major aspect of the "market share" argument.
There hasn't been a true "virus" out there in the wild for years (to me, a true virus means self propogating malware - malware that modifies existing binaries and relies on those modified binaries being distributed). Instead there's a TON of malware intended on converting machines into botnet clients.
The vast majority of malware (maybe as much as 95% or higher) these days is really "crimeware" - software intended to aid in criminal activity (identity theft, click fraud,etc).
As a criminal, let's say that it's going to cost me $10,000 to hire some eastern european hacker to develop malware for my criminal enterprise (number totally made up). I get to chose which platform I have the hacker target - I can target Windows with 90% of the market, I can target OSX with 8% of the market or I can target Linux with 2% of the market (market share numbers also made up, but probably in the right ballpark).
That means that if I'm interested in profit (and this IS a criminal enterprise, so profit is the primary motive), I want to have my hacker target the platform with the highest ROI. That means that the hacker's going to go after Windows and ignore OSX and Linux.
As the Mac's market share increases, it is going to be an increasingly more attractive target for hackers, because the ROI is higher.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
As a criminal, let's say that it's going to cost me $10,000 to hire some eastern european hacker to develop malware for my criminal enterprise (number totally made up). I get to chose which platform I have the hacker target - I can target Windows with 90% of the market, I can target OSX with 8% of the market or I can target Linux with 2% of the market (market share numbers also made up, but probably in the right ballpark).
That means that if I'm interested in profit (and this IS a criminal enterprise, so profit is the primary motive), I want to have my hacker target the platform with the highest ROI. That means that the hacker's going to go after Windows and ignore OSX and Linux.
As the Mac's market share increases, it is going to be an increasingly more attractive target for hackers, because the ROI is higher.
Sure - market share is one factor on ROI. But it's not the only factor. Another big part of ROI is how long you get to keep control [infoworld.com] of your target. If the target doesn't remain compromised very long, then you've wasted your resources (unless of course you only needed a short window - but that's implying a targeted attack and is beyond the scope of this conversation). The thing is, if you look at malware in the wild [wildlist.org], you'll find that there are plenty of examples for Unix malware but they just don't survi
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Windows NT, which was designed, from the beginning, to be "a multi-user OS connected to the internet".
[citation needed]
I will grant you that NT was designed to be connected to a network, but I find it incredulous that the designers had in mind a publicly accessible one, much less the Internet as we know today. Even Billy got it wrong in the first edition of The Road Ahead and had to revise his pontifications.
Re:a way to make money (Score:4, Insightful)
All viruses require a reasonable level of market share to operate, because one of the principles they rely upon is a network effect, and you just plain cannot get a network effect without a decent market share. So marketshare is, very much, a pre-requisite for a successful virus. It's not the only one, but when people say "Mac OS X hasn't been attacked yet because it doesn't have enough marketshare", they're right. That's one fundamental reason. And unless you can show that any other reasons apply, it's likely to be the only reason.
This is called critical mass. The fact that there's a very healthy third-party developer market for OS X is strong evidence that it's reached a sufficient critical mass to attract virus writers. The fact that there are trojans out for OS X is strong evidence for such critical mass.
So, you must be wondering, why aren't there any actual viruses for OS X? It's because they're too damned hard to write. Trojans? No problem. Worms? Sure, but they won't be long-lived. Viruses, though, on OS X are a nut that's yet to be cracked.
People always like to bring up how most malware is meant to earn money, or that most people use Windows, so it's a bigger target. This only explains why OS X has less viruses than Windows. What it doesn't explain is why OS X has no viruses. You'd expect at least one or two, if for nothing else than the fame and to take Mac users down a peg.
The very least Apple could do is set Mac OS X up so that the installer actively discourages setting up the default user as an administrator.
You do not understand how Mac OS X operates. Admin accounts are not the same as the user Administrator or the group Administrators (on Windows), nor the same as root on Unix. They are basically equivalent to a Unix user in the sudoer's file. You have to enter your password to elevate your privileges, just like you do in Unix, and similar to what you have to do in Vista (although the OS X/Unix way is a bit more secure in that someone can't just walk up to your unlocked computer and start wreaking superuser havoc without your password).
Re:a way to make money (Score:5, Insightful)
Why create a virus that only hits 7% of computers when you can hit one that hits 85% of computers?
Yeah. Why achieve the fame and glory of being the first to write a real Mac OS X virus? Why feel satisfied in crushing the worldview of every Mac fanboy in existence?
There's just no draw.
Re:a way to make money (Score:5, Insightful)
Also, virus writers are likely to stick to Windows for the same reason many users do, they already know it. Why spend the extra time learning a new OS to infect the minority when you can target the majority in much less time? That leaves you with so much more time to spend your pilfered moneys.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Depends - those "billions" of zombies have to be defended against other bot herders, are likely to have already been strip-mined of any useful identity information (e.g. the data has already been stolen and sold) and are highly liable to simply bog down and/or die, causing the owner(s) to get a clue and fix the thing(s).
Meanwhile, you still have all those Macs sitting there, with 99.9% (or so) of their owners perfectly oblivious to anyone putting it towards nefarious use.
Sure, you have to put more work in u
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Why create a virus that only hits 7% of computers when you can hit one that hits 85% of computers?
Yeah. Why achieve the fame and glory of being the first to write a real Mac OS X virus? Why feel satisfied in crushing the worldview of every Mac fanboy in existence?
There's just no draw.
The 90s called andd they want their virus-writer stereotype back. In case you haven't noticed, these days big viruses get written for money - huge botnet herds and all that. Search for it on /. if you're really that new here. There is also stealing CC info, but I'd guess the guys writing browser exploits have at least the 2 neurons required to look at the stats of the browsers hitting the sites they infected to see what targets make more sense to code for. Once it makes sense financially to add detection an
Re:a way to make money (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Your absolute shows a lack of thoguht into the situation that is common in America (I am assuming that you're and American, me too).
Both "Market Share" and "Ease of Making the Virus" are reasons viruses get created. Both are factors into the equation, along with others I am sure. To say anything "will never come into the equation" is very short sighted and flat out wrong.
Re:a way to make money (Score:5, Informative)
Macs definitely are susceptible to malware, as the recent DNS trojan has demonstrated. Any app that asks for and gets your admin password is going to play with your computer, that's pretty hard to beat.
Viruses, and worms in particular, do covert, automated spreading. Worms are able to exploit on-by-default network services remotely in the background. (we just had a new one announced yesterday! affects xp AND vista, good lord you'd think they'd learn by now!) Viruses require the ability to circumvent LOCAL security, and get their hooks in the system and replicate locally without user interaction/permission. OS X (and unix in general) are designed from the ground up with this in mind, and have always been far less vulnerable to these two issues.
I don't see this changing anytime soon, just due to the differing design philosophies inside the two systems. From the start of OS X, apps didn't just have free access to do as they pleased, they were restricted by a security model, and learned to develop in OS X under these restrictions, being forced to learn good coding practice. Windows started in the wide open, and their devs got used to it, before they realize the scope of their mistake and tried to close the doors. The devs refused to stop writing apps that just "oh lets just assume we have full write access to the entire hard drive" etc. and so MS has had to go very slowly to avoid completely destroying their established software market. That's hard to overcome.
Even today I can count on one hand all the mac apps I've ran into that either (1) have to be installed while logged in as an admin, or (2) will only run properly (or completely) when logged in as an admin. And I count those developers as idiots for not knowing what they're doing and just assuming they have privs. Until Windows software approaches these numbers, I don't think we can call the Windows security model "fixed".
There are two things that most interest me here. First, Norton has been considered anything from "bad" to "poison" to OS X from the get-go. It's been known to create a wide variety of system problems, and in most cases, when OS X is misbehaving, and they admit they are running norton, the first advice they get is to remove it. (and "good luck removing it" to boot) Symantec has been of little help there, their first "removal tool" was 300+ lines of terminal commands, and still didn't completely uproot it. Their current removal tools are more effective and user-friendly though. So to see Apple RECOMMEND norton is something of a shock. I don't know of a single person in any of the mac support forums that recommends anything for Norton besides uninstalling it.
Second, I thought AV products don't "stack" well? Our PC tech here is constantly having problems with computers that come in and are running 2-4 AV software, and they're fighting like cats and dogs and crippling the system to where only a fresh install will fix it. From what I read on that Apple post, it sounds like Apple is encouraging you to install multiple AV software. And OS X already runs ClamAV doesn't it? Although I have yet to see such a thing get pushed out, I assume Clam can get updates via SoftwareUpdate? I seriously question where they're going by recommending you install additional (or possibly multiple) AV software.
Re:a way to make money (Score:5, Informative)
I don't see this changing anytime soon, just due to the differing design philosophies inside the two systems. From the start of OS X, apps didn't just have free access to do as they pleased, they were restricted by a security model, and learned to develop in OS X under these restrictions, being forced to learn good coding practice.
There is another common stupidity that many Mac developers seem to have that still persists from the Classic days. Many OS X devs still act as though the user installing the app is the only one on the system. A good example is Adobe Reader. EVERY user that runs Reader for the first time will be pestered to enter an administrator password the first time the software is run. The only workaround is to copy some preference files into every home directory on the system and if there is an update to Reader then that has to be done again. Yeah, yeah, I know just use Preview but things like that happening are common. It isn't OS X' fault. There is provision for system wide app settings; it's just that OS X devs tend not to use them the way Windows devs assume everyone is an administrator.
Re:a way to make money (Score:4, Informative)
At a previous job I had the task of making the installer for our consumer level OS X product. I had to fight with management to get them to let me spend the time to get it installed both as a drag install and to do it without requiring admin accesses. (Our product installed an item in System Preferences so this wasn't a no-brainer.)
I eventually prevailed and coded it "correctly" and was quite gratified to read in reviews how good the installation process was. It can be done but the non-Mac managers mindset just often doesn't see the need for doing it the "Mac" way.
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
I don't think they're suggesting that each machine run multiple AV systems, just that there are multiple AV systems in use among all machines, thus decreasing the chances that a virus can exploit a weakness in a particular scanner and remain undetected.
Als
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Second, I thought AV products don't "stack" well? Our PC tech here is constantly having problems with computers that come in and are running 2-4 AV software, and they're fighting like cats and dogs and crippling the system to where only a fresh install will fix it. From what I read on that Apple post, it sounds like Apple is encouraging you to install multiple AV software. And OS X already runs ClamAV doesn't it? Although I have yet to see such a thing get pushed out, I assume Clam can get updates via SoftwareUpdate? I seriously question where they're going by recommending you install additional (or possibly multiple) AV software.
I don't think they're recommending multiple AV installations on any given system, but rather a variety of AV programs being used by their user base at large. So, a virus writer will not be able to count on everyone having exactly the same configuration, and would have to plan to defeat a variety of AV programs if he wanted to ensure the effectiveness of his malicious code. This wouldn't be because all of them would be installed on a computer, but because any one of several would be installed, and he could
ClamAV is included with Mac OS X Server (Score:3, Insightful)
Also, it doesn't appear that Apple is recommending that a user stack more than one AntiVirus package on a given system, rather, they are refraining from picking a single package so that the market is heterogeneous. This affords better protection to the herd as a whole. I agree the technical bulletin is a bit ambiguous on this point.
Re: (Score:2)
That's not really correct. All a virus is is a self-replicating program that infects other files or programs. There's no need for privilege escalation. Granted, that would protect system files from infection (which is good) and perhaps make the virus less dangerous; then again, infecting docs (e.g. macro viruses) and executables in your home directory would still suck. Also sinc
Re: (Score:2)
There's no need for privilege escalation.
Technically correct, but any malware that runs purely with user privileges is going to be pretty tame - especially as it should be DEAD easy to find and kill (admittedly therefore some kind of "antivirus" software would actually be needed, but nowhere near the complex scale of current things)
Granted, that would protect system files from infection (which is good) and perhaps make the virus less dangerous; then again, infecting docs (e.g. macro viruses) and executables in your home directory would still suck
Maybe most users treat their systems differently, but I really don't have anything in my home folder that I couldn't stand to lose and regain. All important documents that don't get modified every day (especially my me
Re: (Score:2)
Why would it need privilege escalation? If there's a hole in some commonly enabled service that runs as root, that would take care of it.
True... I was sort of lazily accepting that as an unspoken obvious point, but you're right I should've mentioned it also. I'd consider this to also be extremely rare though, as it'd first require that there's something running as root listening on the network (only very few services do so), and then that it's exploitable (again the "well tested" part comes in to play here for these kinds of services).
Also, why couldn't a spambot just run in user space? Most people only ever use one account anyway.
Hmmm... I had to really think about this. I GUESS it's possible that code could be executed by a user's pr
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Mine just tries to add a bookmark :/
Guess you have added the shortcut yourself.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
It's Ctrl-Cmd-D. It will define the word under the cursor.
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1. I always thought that a virus (by definition) had local access. If you're talking about network attacks, wouldn't that would be a worm?
Yes, excuse my laziness and see another reply I just made for further explanation.
2. Windows-based antivirus programs usually work based on a database of signatures. If there are no viruses out there to put in the database, wouldn't the AV program be pointless?
In my understanding the database of signatures is mostly a "guaranteed hit" kind of thing. The most important part however is the ability to detect as yet unknown things which works by detecting "malware like activity" (also a kind of signature, but not specific to individual bits of malware). That's what would be implemented in a situation where there's "as yet no known specific viruses"
Re: (Score:2)
is this a scare tactic for apple to push some payfor software and get people to buy it
No, it's just common sense. Macs are not immune to viruses, and it's wise to keep up to date.
It's in the Details (Score:3, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2)
Maybe it's just them covering their own asses against the lawsuits and public backlash that might come if a widespread virus ever does hit OSX.
Whatever the reason, they've been selling AV software in their stores for years now, and even included an antivirus with .Mac subscriptions for a couple years, in spite of these programs essentially not doing anything.
I'll go out on a limb here, though, and I'll advise that you don't install any of Apple's recommended Antivirus packages. They're resource hogs that
Re:a way to make money (Score:4, Informative)
AFAIK this has always been Apple's policy. All they did was update the posting slightly to show the latest leading commercial AV software. Here's the previous update from a year and a half ago. I assume it was just an update of the one previous to it. (I think you will find that it looks very familiar!)
http://web.archive.org/web/20080113164722/http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html%3Fartnum%3D4454 [archive.org]
"Mac OS: Antivirus Utilities
Last Modified on: June 08, 2007
Article: 4454
This article describes the antivirus utilities that are available for the Mac OS.
Apple encourages the widespread use of multiple antivirus utilities so that virus programmers have more than one program to circumvent, thus making the whole virus writing process more difficult. Here are some of the available antivirus utilities:
Intego VirusBarrier X4
Publisher: Intego
License: commercial
Norton Anti-Virus for Macintosh (formerly SAM)
Publisher: Symantec
License: commercial
Virex
Publisher: McAfee
License: commercial
This article provides information about a non-Apple product. Apple, Inc. is not responsible for its content. Please contact the vendor for additional information.
Article 17159: "Locating Vendor Information" can help you search for a particular vendor's address and phone number. Keywords: ktech kmosx"
Not suprised (Score:3, Funny)
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Well what do they expect they start to get a larger market share they start to be the target of more blackhats.
True, but at this current point in time the only thing that this anti-viruses application will detect are MS-Windows viruses. On the other given that a Mac could become a carrier for a virus, being infected through connecting to various networks, this probably helps protect networks that the computer connects to.
On a side note, does anyone know if there is decent GUI for Clam AV?
Sophos (Score:5, Interesting)
Interestingly enough... to date, they have only detected MS based viruses.
Re:Sophos (Score:5, Interesting)
When I ran a lab of Macs several years ago, we ran AV software on all the machines. It was mostly there to strip out the Word macro viruses that students would bring in from their home computers. I'm not aware of the software catching any viruses that could actually have done anything to the machines themselves.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
The only Trojan I've ever seen for Mac was in a Word document macro years ago. The payload was empty if you opened the file on a Windows system, but on a Mac system it would try to wipe the drive.
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I use ClamX. In fact I ran it last night though I wonder if it only looks for windows specific viruses.
As precaution I usually look at what programs are set to automatically start up and the file sharing security.
From my understanding, the only Mac viruses are really just trojans which manually have to be run instead of just browsing to a webpage and then being hit with it.
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Let the flame wars begin (Score:5, Insightful)
M-Apple (Score:2)
http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x7kr6e_mapple-the-simpsons_fun [dailymotion.com]
Re: (Score:2)
I don't need a virus to affect my system (Score:5, Funny)
I have Quicktime.
Does a Mac AV program really do anything? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Does a Mac AV program really do anything? (Score:5, Informative)
That is what I always thought, in fact looking at clamXav it appears to only scan for windows viruses.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
It also detects apache worms. Back in the day SuSE shipped with a vulnerable Apache build and I had to clean a server. ClamAV made it simple to remove the worm, without my having to prune every directory by hand.
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Don't those AV programs mostly scan for Windows viruses on the Mac so you don't pass around those viruses to Windows users?
I remember about a decade ago MS Office implementation on the mac was good enough that Macro virus would run. Fortunately, the file structures were different enough that they wouldn't do much, but at the same time we could also point out how the Macs structure made trojans more effective, and we'ver alreaqdy seen how OS X's Unix underpinnings and x86 architecture make it vulnerable to stuf old MacOS & 68k macs shrugged off
(Psst. The Mac file system is still different from what either Unix or Windows uses. But shhh! I'm really enjoying reading all this concerned hand-wringing as I continue to run my Macs on-line 24/7 with no AV software installed.)
Old document (Score:5, Informative)
This story is just wrong. That document is several years old. Apple advises to install security software since years. They just added new names for recommended software products and therefore updated the issue date on the document.
Anyone know? (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Noooo! Don't give up the game! This whole discussion is proving to be a terrific honey-pot for identifying anti-Mac platform bigots! And here you had to go and ruin it by pointing out that the "news" story isn't actual news.
Oh well. This is slashdot. There will be more.
a necessity (Score:5, Funny)
Well, duh... With the Apple CEO engaging in the unhygienic practice of peeing on all the hardware before it ships, no wonder users are being advised to get some sort of protection against pathogens.
Or was that the Mapple CEO... meh, they probably all do it.
Makes sense in heterogenous networks (Score:5, Informative)
Although your Mac may be safe from the vast majority of malware stuff circulating right now, it can still spread them around and infect for example the other Windows machines on the network (those Microsoft Office macrovirus infections are a good example).
Also, with all the nice virtualisation programs available on the Mac and BootCamp, it makes sense as a Mac user to be more aware of potential malware problems , although then the antivirus solution should be inside that environment, I think. Also those antivirus programs open up a whole other can of worms, because those antivirus companies are splendid examples of honesty and efficient programming, as we all well know
Legal Protection (Score:2)
This has more to do with the protection from law suit from clueless users who might get some virus or whatever installed and claim "what, you have not told me I need an anti-virus software".
But in all seriousness, I would never ever, ever install any kind of anti-virus crap on Windows, let alone non-Windows OS. Those things are more taxing and costly (as in CPU and disk arm cycles) than a virus :D. I have used Windows for decades and never had a virus, and I sure as hell won't be installing anti-virus softw
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How do you know you haven't gotten a virus if you don't have antivirus software?
When I was experimenting with Limited User Accounts on XP, I kept anti-virus and anti-spyware products on my machine and scanned on an occasional basis. The AV program (AVG Free) found nothing after months of use (and didn't detect any live threats whilst browsing). The Anti-Spyware programs would alert me to things like tracking cookies (woooooh, scary !) and Most Recently Used document lists for various apps. I even kept a third-party firewall (Zone Alarm) going to trap anything that tried to 'phone home
question... (Score:2)
I mean, when root privilege is required to affect the core system this should inherently be safer then Win32 where everybody is an administrator.
Disclaimer: Feel free to flame me to a crisp on my lack of knowledge, but I'll make it clear that I am not an expert in computer security and I am in
If you listen carefully... (Score:5, Funny)
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My campus requires it (Score:3, Interesting)
As macs are being used in Enterprise environments they can harbor virus infected files silently before going back into the network. One computer that missed new definitions can be taken down when that file gets passed to it. Its up to you but if you are in Enterprise situations you better comply.
As for multiple AV systems, that is retarded. They will fight for resources and cause performance to be brought down. Just pick one and run with it. If you want.
Re:Symantec *IS* the virus (Score:3, Insightful)
Comment removed (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Um huh? Apple has always recommended protection (Score:5, Funny)
Hell they even gave it away with old .mac accounts. And apple support always had lines saying to use protection. How is it all of a sudden new? They have been saying to use protection for YEARS now.
Very true.
And I've been ignoring the recommendation for years now. Guess which AV app I'm going to install today.
That's right. None. Running an AV program on a Mac makes about as much sense as using a rope to tie down your car every time you park it in your garage.
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They have been saying to use protection for YEARS now.
And yet, AIDs is still an epidemic.
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Correct. They've always had a similar article, listing antivirus solutions. This is just an updated version with current products.
Apple and "security theatre". (Score:2, Redundant)
I am increasingly annoyed by Apple's following Microsoft in "Security Theatre" techniques like the Leopard "OMG you downloaded that file from TEH INTERWEBS!" dialogs, but this is going too far.
Antivirus software does not make any difference to the virus writing process. It can only detect and block existing exploits. Until there ARE active exploits in the wild all it can do is cause time and data loss through false positives.
Boasting? (Score:2)
"After years of boasting about the Mac's near invincibility..." I've been a Mac user for over 22 years. While I have heard many of my fellow Mac users boast about the lack of viruses and other malware for Macs- mainly out of ignorance or just to taunt Windows users- there have been Mac viruses in the past (e.g., nVIR) and there will be Mac viruses in the future. I've always been concerned that complacency regarding Mac malware would eventually result in heinousness once some bad actor sunk their teeth in
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Kinda tough to build a good table of virus definitions when there are none out in the wild for you to define.
Get a grip (Score:2)
Not a technology problem (Score:2)
Viruses and trojans (as opposed to worms) are a user stupidity issue. You can't fix that with technology. For a computer to be useful, it needs to run programs that the user launches. Trying to put something in the way to analyze whether what that user wanted to do is not what the user wanted to do is never going to be successful.
of course, things like MSIE make things bad, as the user has no control over what is going on with the software they run. But that is a problem with a single piece of software
I've got to call cough! *bullshit* cough! (Score:5, Informative)
Apple has NEVER not recommended users install AntiVirus software. One of the first benefits of subscribing to Apple's DotMac web service, a service that is roughly as old as the first Gold Master release of OSX itself, was a complimentary copy of AntiVirus software (McAfee Virex 7.0, released September 2001).
The offer only applies to v7x; which no longer compatible with the latest OSX version, which probably goes a much longer way to explain why Apple is now recommending users install their own choice of a competitive application.
The most recent ad campaign, which does mention vulnerabilities to various malware on Windows machines, comes after more than two decades of people clamoring for Apple to do just that in it's marketing and sales literature. Rather than all of a sudden "quietly" recommending AV software, Apple has always (quietly) recommended it.
The (very lightweight) BBC article comes across as written by someone who only recently started paying attention to Apple, perhaps after her dad bought her an iPod in Journalism school.
Re:Multiple antivirus products? (Score:5, Informative)
Having multiple products deployed mean that the virus programmers have different applications to circumvent. But that's multiple products on different machines-- you wouldn't expect one user to run all of the anti virus products on one machine.
Re:Multiple antivirus products? (Score:4, Funny)
you wouldn't expect one user to run all of the anti virus products on one machine.
It seems you've never had to do IT support for any rich old clueless porn addicts. Lucky you.
Re:A good sign for Apple (Score:5, Insightful)
1% of the market share would still make a valuable bot-net. Even 10% of this 1%. It translates into cash money. If it were easy, some people would have done it.
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>There used to be (I don't know the numbers these days) more than 50% of servers on various unix
Malicious users dont spread viruses on servers, they root them via known vulnerabilities or weak password. No one is sitting at a production servers downloading poker programs and opening attachments from strangers. These are completely different strategies for compromising a box. There's no shortage of rooted boxes out there.
The point is still valid. OSX has been targeted by malware developers recently, start
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The market share myth - is a myth
Most used Webserver - Apache ...and Apache on Windows always had more flaws than Apache on other platforms, according to the writers of Apache due to the security flaws in Windows
But Webserver with the most Virus attacks was always IIS (It has improved due to the bad publicity)
If, as is generally thought, OSX has 1% of the market then it should have 1% of the Viruses, but it has only ever had a handful of viruses and all of these not found in the wild anymore?
Re:A good sign for Apple (Score:5, Insightful)
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This doesn't apply. Macs are not an isolated community. They share data and documents freely with Windows systems, just as Linux systems do. The reason why there are fewer viruses for MacOS is similar to why there are fewer botnets that run on Linux servers.
Antivirus and antispyware protection is like putting buckets in the attic, instead of fixing the roof.
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To add to your statement, I also think they're protected by the fact that if you're taking the time to right a piece of malicious code you generally want it to have the greatest impact possible. Why cut out 80% of the market by finding something to exploit on the mac? Seems like a lot of work to get oneself in to a niche market.
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if you're taking the time to right a piece of malicious code you generally want it to have the greatest impact possible
Yes, and being the first person to come up with a true Mac OS X self-replicating malware wouldn't have any impact at all, would it?
Please just stop with the stupid 'market share' argument. Not everyone who writes malware wants to run a Windows botnet for fun and profit. There are also a lot of people out there who would looooooooove the notoriety that would be attached to being the first gu
Re:Herd Immunity (Score:5, Interesting)
Indeed. Just look at Linux. It had a great security record up until the start of this decade. Then, once it gained a lot of popularity on servers, we started to see millions of infected Linux servers, linked together in botn...
Oh. Well damn. It seems that despite being the near ideal target for virus-writers (always on, very fast links, powerful hardware), the most popular server platform on earth doesn't have a major virus problem. Huh. Maybe an OSs security record isn't directly linked to its popularity...
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"Herd Immunity"
You keep using that expression. I don't think it means what you think it means.
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It's just misspelled. 'Hurd Immunity': a system gets no viruses because it has no users.
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I think that's a bit of faulty reasoning. For though Macs are a small percentage of the computers, they still represent millions of consumers. If that reasoning was correct, since Macs and Linux represent X% of users, they should be getting X% of viruses. By their nature they don't get viruses mainly due to the nature of their OS that programs can't autorun without permission. As
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Yes. That must be the only reason. Windows is obviously just as secure as OSX and other Unix based OSes. *rolls eyes*
With the amount of people that hate Mac fanboys you'd think that virus writers would be well on their way by now if there were any real remote exploits they could make use of. I'm not saying it's impossible to write a virus for Macs or Linux - the authors of any software are only human after all. But the whole design ethos is just much better than that of Windows. If I were a virus writer I w
Re:Oh Shit (Score:5, Insightful)
You have strange ideas of trustworthy sources for 'facts'.
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I did. They do. I'm clearly missing your pun. Mind clarifying it for me?
Re:Admin user (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, that's the issue. You've been able to write software for Windows that allows for non-admin since 1999. My Documents, no user files in Program Files, non-admin logins, the whole nine yards.
But, of course, developers are lazy. They don't want to write proper software.
Can Microsoft force it? Of course. They tried it with Vista and UAC; pop up a little 'fuck you' every time a program does something the Windows 95 paradigm. And they got raked over the coals for it.
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I'm not bashing Microsoft. If Microsoft could find a way to force all third party software developers to make their programs run from non-admin users, I'm sure they would have made users non-admin by default by now.
That's what they tried with Vista. I've been running my XP box for the past two years without any AV software by making sure all users have Limited Accounts and the Admin account is only ever used for installing software or drivers. If a particular application still requires Admin privs, it simply doesn't get to run on my machine and I might even let the writers know, if I feel it's an important program.
Lots of good stuff about Limited User Accounts here - http://blogs.msdn.com/aaron_margosis/pages/TOC. [msdn.com]
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As others have stated that's a total myth and is simply not true.
Apple has about 10% right now, so by your theory 10% of viruses should be for OSX. Number of viruses in the wild? Zero.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Any information release by Apple that doesn't occur during a Special Event seems to be suspect.
("In other news, Steve Jobs quietly blows his nose. Will this fuel more concerns about his health?")