what about viruses
i'm looking into buying a Mac. i'm just plain tired of the PC world. i keep reading about how Macs don't have viruses which is remarkable. i just have a few questions along those lines. if someone downloads an mp3 from a p2p network, what happens with the file? will it harm the computer at all? also, how come i hear about people buying virus programs for Macs? are they really necessary?
Comments
Virus programs for Macs are usually bought because, even though there's not an in-the-wild virus for OS X, attachments in emails can still have Windows viruses. While these viruses can't infect a Mac computer, if you forward the attachment to a Windows user, it can infect them. So, some people feel that the virus scanner is worth it in protecting their and other peoples' Windows computers from viruses. I personally don't use one, but there are people who do.
Ultimately, it seems that even that would get bug-stomped these days as the internet service providers have dutifully taken it upon themselves to scan incoming traffic and filter out the crap before passing it on. I don't know if all service providers do it, but I know the spam messages I get are frequently modified with a message saying that such and such virus has been neutralized from the email.
Originally posted by Randycat99
Well, that's the thing I've always wondered. Do Mac anti-virus programs and PC anti-virus programs even scan for the same kind of thing? ...or do Mac programs scan for Mac-specific viruses and PC programs scan for Windows-specific viruses?
If that were the case, the Mac virus checker programs would be very easy to write indeed... there is not a single Mac OS X virus at this time. Not one.
There are three known example implementations of trojan horses (a malicious app masquerading as something else, such as an MP3 file or the MS Office 2004 Installer), but only the Office Installer has ever been seen in the wild (and that one was on P2P networks... sorry, but anyone who think that a very small (160kB) file found on a P2P network is actually the full MS Office 2004 Installer... well... Darwin had something, didn't he?)
And that, boys and girls, about sums up the state of viruses, trojan horses, and worms on the Mac right now.
ie, the only real reason to buy a Mac anti-virus program is to save your Windows using cohorts from their own systems. I say let 'em hang.
I guess one other thing that may suggest if Windows viruses are really being scanned or not is to take a look at the AV database. If it is several MB's in size, that would be fitting for the amount of Windows viruses out there. If it is just a meg or so, it's probably just Mac known viruses (that have ever existed, period).
Originally posted by Randycat99
I guess all I can say is that earlier versions of NAV surely didn't scan for Windows viruses. I can remember doing a scan, fully realizing that there is an email in my mailbox right then with one of those nasty attachments (before the time when ISP's did their AV filtering), and NAV never found a thing.
Did NAV purport to scan your Inbox, or only files on your disk? See, if you were using a mail client that stored messages in proprietary database files, then NAV would never see it unless it asked the mailer for a copy of each message in turn, and scanned that.
Norton has an *extremely* bad reputation with their MacOS X offerings, however, so it doesn't surprise me if it failed at its task. (Their Disk Doctor screws up healthy HFS+ drives under MacOS X... never, ever run it if you have the option.)
Originally posted by numark
I'm not sure I completely understand your first question. If someone downloads a file from a P2P network (the legal and moral issues of which are left as an exercise to the reader), it should just play like any normal MP3 file. I don't see how it could possibly harm your computer (issues of hidden Applescripts aside).
i apologize for that. what i meant was that if someone downloaded a file from a P2P network and the file happened to be a virus, could it infect a Mac? from what i've read in the responses though, it seems that the file would just sit there and do nothing.
Thankfully my mac has none of these problems, but I still am paranoid, I got virex for free (or should I say not...) for being a college student, ASU gives free virus scan utilities... not a single virus in a year...