Is Mac under a virus attack?

Consumers: OS X is very safe from Viruses - Here's why!

Remembering that this thread deals with "viruses" (check the title) let's ditch the notion that consumers are at any particular virus risk by using Mac OS X. When the experts tell you that you are safer from viruses on OS X that on that other big consumer OS found on PCs they are correct and you can be confident of that.

Here's why: computer viruses only exist when and where they are allowed to have a purpose by a host operating system. When you opted for an Apple OS X computer you escaped using that other company's operating system, which continues to allow viruses to affect it after decades of their existence. Need proof of that?

Consumers need only look at the computer software marketplace to see that no corporation makes or distributes anti-virus products specifically to thwart OS X viruses. Got that? I'll repeat it just to be sure: there are NO anti-virus products that guard against OS X viruses. Nobody has found a way to make money on such a product, for obvious reasons. Imagine that... a huge, profitable computer anti-virus industry does not make any products that guard against viruses that attack OS X. One pretender trying to enter the field recently claimed something to the effect that "if an OS X virus is ever found, we'll be there to guard against it"... what a hoot!

But wait, you might say, you've checked and there are indeed anti-virus products that run on OS X. True, but those products are simply for situations of file sharing. It would be crummy to have a PC user send you a virus-tainted file that does nothing to your OS X machine but which infects another PC down the line if you share it further. For IT departments running Linux and/or Unix and/or mainframes the situation is the same: there is no direct need for anti-virus products for those OSes either, but we take steps to protect that other company's PCs nevertheless.

Beware of being bamboozled. All too often the fact that OS X computers are safe from viruses is smeared over by competitors with all-purpose, catch-all cries about "security". Indeed, the article linked in the first post is classic scare mongering - the lurid title was seemingly calculated to improve the writer's employer's online visit count. Don't let that nonsense alarm you, and don't fall for their line that your OS X computer is supposedly weaker or inferior to their PC product. Keep your OS X computers up to date, use safe practices such as Firefox, Opera, and Chrome web browsers and other reliably strong software, and say goodbye to viruses.

To summarize, consumers can be proud of their decision to avoid viruses by going with Apple computers running the OS X operating system.

ScaryBob said:

Mach was originally developed on and incorporated into BSD years before OS X was worked on. FreeBSD has a completely open and unencumbered distribution model so it is a popular source of code and features for companies like Apple and Microsoft. Whether it was "borrowed" directly or by some other means (less likely due to more restrictive copyrights on other sources), FreeBSD is still the version of BSD that is closest to the original BSD source and can be considered to be the basis for OS X.

Click to expand...

OS X evolved from NeXTSTEP not directly from BSD, and the amount of shared code is very very small compared to the amount of code that is not shared. I'm just saying that because so little is shared, suggesting that BSDs excellent security record should somehow translate to a great OS X security record wrong, because that is not what we see. There is a difference between safe and secure. Mac OS X may be safe while it has a small market share, but compared to Windows it isn't very secure.

When Charlie Millar was asked:

Q: Why Safari? Why didn’t you go after IE?

A: It’s really simple. Safari on the Mac is easier to exploit. The things that Windows do to make it harder (for an exploit to work), Macs don’t do. Hacking into Macs is so much easier. You don’t have to jump through hoops and deal with all the anti-exploit mitigations you’d find in Windows.

It’s more about the operating system than the (target) program. Firefox on Mac is pretty easy too. The underlying OS doesn’t have anti-exploit stuff built into it.

Click to expand...

source

Macs are safer because they are not targeted as often, but they are less secure when they actually are targeted for attack. The possible financial gain of creating a Windows based exploit is much higher because of the higher market-share, and that incentive is what is driving most of the black hats. According to a Google employee I talked to, Google was a victim of a spear fishing attack that exploited OS X weaknesses so the statement that "it never happens" to OS X is just wrong. This was the attack that was purported to be executed by the Chinese government over a year ago.

The suggestion that OS X users just don't need to worry about security is misleading and dangerous.

These are my rules for safe computing on the Mac (should be true for Windows Vista/7 as well.) I email it as a reminder to friends and family every once in a while (especially when a new rogue piece of malware has been discovered) to remind them of what not to do.


The Mac is a very safe computer environment but it is only as safe as the person behind the keyboard makes it!

One reason I discourage the installation of anti-malware on that Mac is because following those simple rules should keep people safe from malware but mainly because if a pop-up or warning should try and scare the person into thinking that they are infected it is obvious that it is fake.

I also install the 'ClickToFlash' extension for the Safari web browser. Not only does it keep the myriad of Flash animations from playing on my screen as I visit web sites but it is a good preventative measure against rogue/infected Flash programs.