Apple now "encourages" antivirus use for Mac OS X - Page 3

If we ever need antivirus, I think it would be more interesting for it to run on our backups, not bloating our Mac use.

TimeCapsule is already connected to the internet and has backups as recently as 1 hour ago. Apple could deliver AV checks directly to TimeCapsule, and even rotate the AV provider. If it finds something, it cleans it in the backup then cleans the same file on the Mac. And sends me an email to say that something happened. I need barely notice.

Nice of Apple to post up some comic relief by suggesting that to avoid the horrifying spectre of malware, Mac users should install what is essentially the only malware OS X users have ever been impacted by in any notable number. However, it's irresponsible for them to put comic relief in a knowledge base article.

Dan Dilger wrote an article back in April explaining why the market share argument concerning Mac malware doesn't hold up, titled The Unavoidable Malware Myth. I've heard it said that Dilger is a "troll" or something along those lines (though that was said on one of the *chans, so it may have just been because he has the gall to use common sense), so obviously not everyone agrees with his standpoints, but I think he's got some good points.

The fact remains that the only malware that is capable of affecting Mac OS X has to be given permission to do so (and in some cases, even has to be bought first!). A user that hasn't been educated enough to know they shouldn't install third-party software they didn't ask for will not be safe on any computer platform. Sure, running Windows in particular more or less guarantees that they won't be safe regardless, but it's still true. Honestly, I'd like to see education get dramatically ramped up. Have ISPs not only provide anti-malware products to their customers, but tell those customers why, and reveal that they only need it because they run Windows. Have governments educate their citizens so they know that malware is not an inherent part of Using A Computer, not just provide community programs on how to use Microsoft Word® to type a letter to your grandchildren.

You know how decades-long wars end? Parents stop teaching their children to hate each other. How does a crippling, worldwide, billions-of-dollars-a-year malware pandemic end? People stop being told to accept it as a fact of life.

(Also, Jesus Christ, MacBliss, settle down. )

If they took an official position that you *DON'T* need AV and something happened - they'd be dragged into court. Which is why the commercials and ads are carefully worded as well.

I mean, just using Google..

http://www.parental-controls-softwar...r-mac-os-x.htm

Mac being safe from viruses was the biggest reason that I switched to Mac from Windows. This news is certainly not good for me \Apple guys do something and make the OS X secure as it was before. I don't want to run these crazy AVs on my MacBook.

They have recommended anti-virus software before.
Get your facts right before it goes to the front page next time.

http://www.9to5mac.com/crazy-displayport-virus

Regardless of of how educated or uneducated the user, the fact is, that a Windows computer with javascript turned on can be infected with trojans simply by visiting a hacked web page - sometimes even if it has up-to-date AV software installed.

Even Macs can be redirected to an unwanted website by the same means. And since the initial attack might be by SQL injection, it is not a matter of avoiding suspicious sites. Any unsecured database driven server can be the source. Maybe a school or church etc.

AV or not, any computer which is connected to a network or is lacking in physical security can be hacked.

The only thing that worries me is that the stupid ones will actually go out and install multiple AV packages on their Macs and then rant and rave about how slow and unstable their systems are... and blame Apple for it!

Yep, this is MORE than obvious. In fact, Apple has put the support note for 3 main reasons:

1 - LEGAL - To ensure that no crackpot sues the company because of invulnerability allegations or misleading advertisement;

2 - MARKET-DRIVEN - millions of Macs interact or even use Windows as a second (crappy) OS; so Apple is more than wise to recommend AV software, even though its need for OS X-viruses is nil. And don't forget that Mac antivirus is MAINLY aimed at disabling PC viruses that you might receive by email;

3 - POSSIBLY MARKET-DRIVEN (2) - the leading AV companies have paid for Apple to put such note in there...you can see that there is no mention of free alternatives.

Ah, you are right! I don't use shared folders in Parallels, but I just checked and my OS X home folder is shared. I'm turning that off now and I'll set up a share to a dedicated subfolder if I ever need to use that feature. (Typically I just drag and drop between desktops when I need to share files.) Thanks for the tip!

(And on a side note, I just discovered that Parallels 4 lets me edit my virtual machine configuration while it is running. That's a great improvement from version 3.)

ABSOLUTELY NOTHING has changed from before...OS X has ZERO viruses on the wild, and is BY FAR the safest OS on Earth. I have never used an AV before, and won't start now. So rest assured, Apple's note is not new and constitutes simply responsible business, especially for wannabe switchers and corporate clients, as said above.

The last systematic study I saw concluded that Wikipedia had a lower rate of factual errors than either Encarta or Britannica. And WikiP now has multiples of the number of topics covered.

There are recurring problems around particular issues and personalities, esp. e.g., around politicians during campaigns and controversial social issues, but like open source software corrected by the overlapping banging on it by many contributors, WP is open source knowledge with built-in methods for self-correction over time. Articles also cite when references are missing or incomplete and when content is in dispute.

There are also layers of oversight within the dedicated Wikipedia community and ways of holding page vandalism down to a dull roar. None of these processes are perfect, but neither are they at for profit "professionally assembled" knowledge bases. Ever been at an event covered by various forms of media, and then read/watched/listened to the news reports?? I find the reporters and I have apparently not only been to rather different events, but also at times we must have attended in alternate realities.

In terms of human "knowledge" and "statements of fact" (whether scientific, historical, biographical, or otherwise), remember always Will Roger's (you can look him up on Wikipedia!) famous dictum:

"There are three kinds of men. The one that learns by reading. The few who learn by observation. The rest of them have to pee on the electric fence for themselves."


I thought he was also the source of the rule of thumb to to believe "half of what [you] see and none of what [you] read (or hear)." However I wasn't able to verify this.

Anyway, when I really want to dig into something I know little about, WP is not my only source, but it is almost always my first. And this approach does not make one a "Wikipediot."

I'm also enjoying correcting and augmenting articles myself. I felt, e.g., a minor amount of pride in changing one bio to reflect that one person referred to as someone's estranged brother was actually their estranged step-brother, illustrating the self-corrective process at work.

And this is an Apple forum -- and all of Apple (except classic and classic-derived iPods) runs on an open source kernel!

There are some free alternatives that are popular and provide by Apple in their server OS, I think I read somewhere.

www.clamav.net

is the original UNIX AV site, and can be gotten for the mac from macports.org

www.clamxav.com

is a free GUI front end to clamav for OS X, it is very basic, but liked

http://www.protectmac.com/

is a new commercial GUI front end to clamav that is excellent from my experience with the demo. It has been bashed on macupdate and versiontracker for reasons I don't understand (charging for making a GUI to open source software, I think, but honestly, it's a good GUI, and the underlying product is well tested).

I will probably purchase this, as you get it on 3 macs for about $15 a piece. Not bad. But check out the free alternatives too.

I sincerely hope so. OS X is great and it would be terrible if it also becomes a victim of viruses. Apple should try to fix loopholes, if there are any, in OS X itself so that one could be safe from virus threats. I just can digest the idea of using AV on Mac. Mac and AV must not go together.

I sincerely hope so. OS X is great and it would be terrible if it also becomes a victim of viruses. Apple should try to fix loopholes, if there are any, in OS X itself so that one could be safe from virus threats. I just can digest the idea of using AV on Mac. Mac and AV must not go together.

I use a Windows PC, and the only AV I've ever used is ZoneAlarm. Works perfectly, is easy to use, and never bogs down my system. Despite using an AV though, the only virus I've ever had was the Autorun virus, which (for those who have ever had it) is a pesky and particularly malicous Windows virus. Had to end up nuking both my 500GB hard drives and reinstall XP (thank GOD I had everthing backed up). But for those who think jumping back to "system snapshots" will get rid of viruses, think again. Many cunning viruses these days bury themselves in your boot sector, meaning things can get hairy pretty quickly. Make no mistake, viruses will soon start creeping into Mac territory, its not a question of if, but when.

Utter bullshit coming from a Windows user. The "security through obscurity" myth has been debunked many times, no matter how hard security "experts" try to sell their companies' products.

FACT: THERE ARE AT LEAST 50 MILLION MAC USERS AROUND THE WORLD, and this grows every day.

FACT: THERE IS NOT A SINGLE OS X VIRUS IN THE WILD. And this after almost 8 years of OS X in the mass market.

http://www.wildlist.org/WildList/200810.htm

Interesting read on your blog

____________

Exactly. I never had a problem with malware on Windows, and I don't expect I'll ever have a problem with it on the Mac.

But, boy, I've seen some messed up PCs owned by friends and family. There are some people, smart people, who become serious retards when you set them down in front of a computer. Windows doesn't do much, by design, to protect itself from stupid people. OS X's UNIX underpinnings make it more secure in the hands of idiot users, although they still find ways to break things.

In medicine, it is prudent to wash your hands before and after examining a patient.

Just how does one discover a cure for a disease that hasn't been diagnosed yet?

My apologizes if this was already posted, but I'm not going to read all the replies. Apparently this is old news and Apple has been quietly promoting AV protection for sometime.

http://gizmodo.com/5100996/false-ala...ndation-is-old

"as a product gets more popular it becomes a target", but is this encouragement by Apple regarding AV use due to popularity or the direction SJ has taken Apple, ie. Intel Processor, Open Source, Boot Camp, OS X itself?

Maybe time to dust off my old blue/white G3 with OS 8.6, when Mac OS was a Mac OS...

try looking up clamxav, very small footprint & very customizable. It's designed around ClamAV, built into OS X Leopard already. Unlike McAfee or Symantec ClamAV is focused more on Linux/Unix viruses than windows viruses.

The content is written with citations. That means that each is sourced. It is your job to go look up and see if the citation is from a legitimate website, not anyone else. Also, most of the information on Wikipedia is pulled from other sources including other dictionaries, encyclopedias, websites, and news sources. If one were to use these sources (and cite them) in an article on Wikipedia, then you are now saying that there is no such thing as a trusted person with knowledge.

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I generally don't download anything on my Mac so I don't see this to be an issue. I guess you can never be too safe! This appears to be more of a liability issue for Apple rather than implying that there are actual (destructive) viruses for the OS. I never had viruses on my PC, I'll do the same for my Mac (I hope).

Where, exactly, does the post become "utter bullshit"?

1) The statement that iReality85 uses a Windows PC?

2) The statement that iReality85 has only ever used ZoneAlarm?

3) The observation that iReality85 thinks that ZoneAlarm for Windows "works perfectly, is easy to use, and never bogs down (his) system"?

4) The statement that iReality85's only malware infection ever was the Autorun virus?

5) The observation that the Autorun virus is a pesky and particularly malicous Windows virus"?

6) The statement that to fix his only virus, iReality85 had to end up nuking both his 500GB hard drives and reinstall XP?

7) The statement that system restore points (or whatever you want to call them) are sometimes insufficient to correct certain potential types of malware infection?
7a) The example of a program which finds a way to corrupt sector 0 of a hard drive (in a computer system which uses the data stored in sector 0 as a necessary step in booting the system stored on that disc, such as is the case in a Mac or PC), as an example of such a class of malware?

8) Or the final statement, that (paraphrasing) even though there are currently no viruses in the wild that target Mac OS X, it does not logically follow that Mac OS X is inherently impervious to viral attacks?

The real issue, at this point, isn't the mac, but virtualization software.
If you're running any of the virtualization packages that try to create a "better user experience" by e.g. mapping your Mac desktop to your Windows desktop, your Mac Documents folder to your Windows MyDocuments folder, etc. then you have need for virus software, because a Virus infecting Windows can wipe or infest files on your Mac through these drive and folder mappings.

Also, even if your computer may not have any harm from it, if you work in a promiscuous environment, you could pass on infected files (e.g. Office documents with Macro viruses) by distributing files received from others.

So virus software on the Mac is a matter of courtesy to other users, and a matter of self protection for those who use Windows in a virtualized environments.

With the spread of the latter, it would be reckless if Apple would recommend against using anti-virus software.

If you're in a pure, homogeneous Mac environment and don't use virtualization software and if your workflow does not necessitate exchanging commonly infected document types with other users, then your need for anti-virus software on the Mac remains marginal, at best.

Steve Mobs thanks you.

I'm really surprised that the vast majority of people have never run anti-virus software. I always assume people have the software and just run it every once in a while. I use ClamXAV when I want to scan a file I've downloaded or received via email, but I don't have it set up to continually scan. I read a post today at Mac Guru Lounge on the Top 5 Mac Security Tips for the Holidays, which also talked about running AV software.

now the item has been removed from the website, they naoe say you don't really need antivirus.

see bbc news website:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/7760344.stm

unless your running windows on your mac

make up your mind
i run ClamXav its free and will do, as there seems to be none or very few virus etc out there for mac's, but the big problem is the code injected into websites etc, to pinch your data, but a good browser etc, should cover that

Why thank you Ifmorrison. I was kind of perlexed myself. To brlawyer, I was making no such reference to this "security through obscurity" theory in my post. I was implying that because there are no Mac viruses at present the odds are great that there will be Mac viruses in the future (the quantity or maliciousness of such remains to be seen). That is not "security through obscurity," but rather the "laws of probability."

I don't even use anti virus software on the Windows laptop I have, sure as hell not going to bother with it on my Macbook. What for? In years past I had 3 viruses on old pc's and the anti virus software did NOTHING, so why bother.
Uninstall all anti virus software, don't open strange email, stay off AOL.
Haven't had any problems in 4 years.

thats A O Hell

I have been using antivirus software for a number of years now on my macs as I do have a lot of windows using friends.  More to make sure I don't send anything on.

 

For me it has been a piece of mind.

 

Seeing apple saying it is a small shock but I cannot say I have seen it coming for a while now.

 

Better to be safe than have crap causing havoc

 

Probably because this thread is four years old and was kicked up by a malware spammer. 

 

You don't now nor will you ever need anti-virus on your Mac. Particularly with the way things are going.

I have seen virus infections on Macs in the wild - back in the days of OS 8 or maybe it was 7. There was a virus called cdev (http://support.apple.com/kb/TA37952?viewlocale=en_US&locale=en_US) that infected each mounted volume exactly once and didn't cause any harm. There was also some sort of worm that was accidentally included on a Mac World CD, I don't think that caused any damage either. 

 

I have seen hundreds of virus infections on dozens of PCs in the wild - infections that have been able to disable the anti-malware software that was installed and set to auto update - and which in some cases were very challenging to remove. The cases where I have seen the worst infections have been users who insist on doing things like downloading free games, installing 2 dozen IE Toolbars, and downloading from file sharing websites. Although I have not personally seen a purposefully destructive virus, there have been those which were designed to erase a hard drive, I have had a couple cases where it was easier to wipe the hard drive and reinstall Windows. With Windows XP far more susceptible than Windows 7. I have tried most every product out there and none of them in my opinion are foolproof as I have seen most that I have used defeated in some way at some point, although most often due to lack of updates. 

 

I used to run anti virus on the Mac - forget the name - rather than scanning for virus signatures - it would monitor for not standard operations - for example, a program changing its own contents - this was back in OS 7 or so (System 7 if you want to get technical). The trouble was that almost every app from Microsoft did something was a violation of Apple's guidelines so there were lots of exceptions to be made in order for things to run properly. 

 

The new GateKeeper function in OS X is interesting - although so far for me it has only managed to stop a legitimate program from running - and I do wonder how hard it might be for someone to make malware that copies a legitimate developer's code (or whatever they use). 

 

I have run a ClamXav scan on my system a couple times (including while writing this message just for fun) and have yet to personally see a virus on Mac OS X. Which is not to say that I think it is somehow impossible, exceedingly difficult and unlikely perhaps. There is a lot of talk about how the increasing popularity of Mac OS X will make it an more likely target - but don't forget that larger numbers doesn't necessarily make it any easier - and provided the folks behind phishing scams etc are profitable enough at what they are doing they have no incentive to spend the time and effort to try to exploit Mac OS users. So it would seem to me that only a drastic reduction in the ability to attack Windows operating systems would result in an increased attempt to attack Mac OS. So in a way we should be thankful to our Windows counterparts for taking the brunt of the burden and acting as a short of human shield against the vast majority of such attacks from ever even looking in our direction.