I'm with Mr Me... been using Macs since 1987 and never lost a file to a virus and have never (ever) seen an OSX virus. I used to use virus software because there were several viruses (e.g. Microsoft macro viruses) on OS 7, 8 and 9 that could potentially do damage, but haven't had any AVS installed for the last several years.
At work I'm on a Windows network (with just a few minor access issues) and live under a constant barrage of viruses, spy-ware, worms and trojans that keep taking out my colleagues' Windblows PCs (and USB drives). I think Apple might be worried about infection of the the Windows partition and/or might be getting ready to do battle with viruses on the iPhone (which is becoming a dominant and attractive platform for attacks), viruses which might migrate to the Mac since they're both OSX. I expect Apple to keep ahead of the nasties.
I've been staying away from Norton and McAffee because they almost always were more trouble than they were worth. Another problem I see is that for some people, the protection of antivirus makes people feel safe enough to engage in risky behavior. My dad double clicked an attachment thinking that he was safe, when the antivirus was broken or disabled. Even using a Mac isn't ironclad protection, and that too can lull people into a sense of protection. Preventing malware requires more than one stage of protection.
Quote:
Originally Posted by fraklinc
So could this mean that Apple has started receiving $$$ from Mcafee/Norton to start F*cking with the Mac users now. The only people that benefit from these viruses are these scumbags selling virus scams
Not entirely true. The people that make viruses stand to make money too, they are now used to set up botnets for sending spam or to sniff passwords from banking sites. Malware creation is now a shadow industry in itself.
Quote:
Originally Posted by ascii
I don't have AV software even on my PC...
If you:
- have a small set of known, trusted websites you visit
- only install software from reputable companies (and not pirate copies)
- don't open strange emails
- keep backups
Then you should be ok. And if you're using a Mac you're almost certainly ok.
Even trusted web sites can be hacked, though sticking to a few sites is a way to minimize exposure.
Another big way to minimize exposure is to use alternate web browsers. Internet Explorer is a big bogeyman.
I'm using the free iAntivirus which has a very small footprint. Very easy to install, you even forget it's there. Besides, it only has virus definitions for the Mac so it is not bloated with those for Windows.
Given my experiences with Norton products on Windows over the years, I'd rather risk the virus than install their bloaty junk on OSX.
I also think this is just Apple covering their arses, because if a Mac virus DID hit amidst all these "virus-free" claims, they would be sued into oblivion.
If you run Windows on a Mac, either by booting directly into Windows or running it on top of the Mac OS via Parallels or Fusion, the worst that can happen is that your Windows environment could be infected. My understanding is that the Windows environment is naturally quarantined.
For my purposes, Parallels works great because my entire Windows installation is contained in a single Mac file that I can back up along with the rest of my files. If I should happen to get a virus in Windows, I can just restore yesterday's backup and it's gone. In fact, I think that avoiding the whole Windows reinstallation ordeal might be the best thing about running it on a Mac.
I think you need to be careful with that! Recent Parallels and Fusion allow shared folders, maybe even by default. This exposes your mac home folder to Windows and its viruses. If Windows got a virus that tried to delete all files, the mac files in those folders would go too. OSX would be safe, and the mac unaffected. But, as I understand it, your files are not.
I address this by restricting the shared folders. I remove the user folder (or is it the users documents folder?) share and set up a new one to a folder within my documents folder. That, and any sub folders, is all Windows has access to.
Also, since Macs are renowned for being so overpriced, wouldn't it behooved nefarious SW developers to target machines that are typically bought by people with more money and who apparently are so arrogant that they brag about not needing virus protection software?
And why should virus authors care about how much money you have or your attitude? They are in a (very lucrative) business, and these supposed characteristics of the Mac User have no economical impact on their business model.
Nowadays, the main purposes of virus as an economical activity are mainly :
- building computer farms, that can be used for illegal activities thanks for the cumulated bandwidth and processing power : SPAM, code cracking, DoS attacks...
- gathering private information : credit card, bank account...
- gathering corporate information : infected computer can provide an access inside the company, and that access can be used to gather data. Data that can be used either to blackmail or to sell to competitors.
It makes sense to target PC/Windows. The market share argument is a valid one. Not only because you have a much bigger potential base to infect. But also because more computer means more exchanges between them, and faster and broader contamination.
Another explanation is that PC are dominant in corporations. And corporations mean more processing power, more bandwidth and potentially marketable information.
The profile of the PC user is also different from the profile of the Mac user. PC users tend to download illegal material more, to install lots of "funny" stuff... This makes it a more interesting platform to target.
You have to consider building virus as any other economic activity. On one hand, you have the cost and on the other the benefits. Building a Mac virus is more costly than building a PC one, and the potential benefits are much smaller. This doesn't mean that it is impossible for a virus to target the Mac, it just means that it's not as profitable as targetting the PC/Windows world...
There are no shortages of bottom feeding trial lawyers looking for a meal at Apple's treasury.
Think of the liability, if Apple wasn't cautioning users about security and the steps they should consider, when someone finally cracks OSX, and OSX malware finally breaks into the wild.
This is just smart business.
So basically, a company can say anything, and make any claims it wants as long as they follow it with a fine-print disclaimer worded in legalese? Wouldn't the more sensible approach be to not make such claims in the first place?
While everyone is bashing lawyers for initiating lawsuits, why aren't these people saying anything about the marketing departments that make questionable claims in the first place? Which lawyers are considered worse? The ones who file frivolous lawsuits or the ones who defend companies that engage in scumbag business practices?
Unless and until it has been demonstrated that there actually are OS X viruses out there that I'm in any danger of picking up, I'd rather stick with a clean system uncluttered by AV software.
I think you need to be careful with that! Recent Parallels and Fusion allow shared folders, maybe even by default. This exposes your mac home folder to Windows and its viruses. If Windows got a virus that tried to delete all files, the mac files in those folders would go too. OSX would be safe, and the mac unaffected. But, as I understand it, your files are not.
I address this by restricting the shared folders. I remove the user folder (or is it the users documents folder?) share and set up a new one to a folder within my documents folder. That, and any sub folders, is all Windows has access to.
If it did wipe out your files you've always got yesterday's, and the day before, and the day before, etc. all the way back to when you first turned on Time Machine. You DO run Time Machine, right? Best protection you can have for an accidental wipe (or intentional, in the case of a Windows virus).
Safest thing to do though, if you're running Windows via Fusion you only grant Windows network access to/from the host Mac and use the Mac to d/l anything you need on the Windows side, then drag it from Mac to Windows' window. Works for me.
This newsarticle is wrong. The knowledge base article has been there for a while, it just was updated a few days ago. Click the link to the german or french version of the article (left side), the date those two were last changed is July 30, 2008.
This newsarticle is wrong. The knowledge base article has been there for a while, it just was updated a few days ago. Click the link to the german or french version of the article (left side), the date those two were last changed is July 30, 2008.
I read a prior knowledge base article recommending AV sometime last summer (2007) and it didn't look new then either.
I back up my home folder every day and my entire computer every week ... I think this is more important than anti-virus software because it protects not only against viruses but against theft, drops, spills, hardware failure, and user error.
Unless the virus has a delay before it does anything and then all your backups will have the virus on them.
I see the point of Apple recommending Virus scanners, there may not be many at the mo and there haven't been any big ones. But the fact is most of the Mac market doesn't have any protection so when someone does come out with a big one it will spread through all of them and spread fast with nothing in its way.
I for one though don't really bother. The same goes for Windows as well, in all the years I've used windows (since 95) I've never had one Virus. I don't download crap and my ISP scans my emails for virus's so the risk is low.
Oh no! I hate anti-virus software, there is nothing worse than a buggy anti-virus application. Hello 'Hang-time' groggy machines, web access shutdown until update loads, general performance malaise. Say it's not true.
We Mac users need to move away from the term AV. As posters have already mention a virus is self-replicating, hasn't been seen on OS X ever and until such time I'm not wasting processor cycles.
As a fairly savvy computer user I (hope) that I can spot a phish or attempts at a trojan. Apple should move to providing an iSecure type package to help less confident users spot these scams. The recent anti-phishing work in Safari is a welcome example.
We Mac users need to move away from the term AV. As posters have already mention a virus is self-replicating, hasn't been seen on OS X ever and until such time I'm not wasting processor cycles.
As a fairly savvy computer user I (hope) that I can spot a phish or attempts at a trojan. Apple should move to providing an iSecure type package to help less confident users spot these scams. The recent anti-phishing work in Safari is a welcome example.
I think the catch-all term is now malware. Anti-malware software is probably more accurate. AV software doesn't just look for virus, generally they look for other forms of malware too.
It's interesting how Apple are advocating the use of more than one AntiVirus application. I am a native Windows and PC user, although I am writing this from my new MacBook White(!), and Windows users are advised to only use one virus scanner at a time as multiple ones installed can disable one another!
Also, as a native Windows user, my PC, Windows Tablet, Mac mini, and MacBook all have virus scanning software - it gives me piece of mind that I am safe!
I have spent many long hours cleaning malware from Windows machines - and I can tell you for sure that it often takes multiple products to do the job effectively - and in some cases those tools each have to be run multiple times to clean everything. Some of them do not search the system restore volumes for example. What you have to watch for is folks who don't know better and install so many different anti virus, anti spyware, anti etc etc etc that their system ends up spending 90% of its CPU cycles scanning files. I have personally seen cases where Norton was disabled by a virus. I have also seen too many cases where a user had anti-virus software that expired a year ago and was doing little to no good.
On Mac - the last time I saw an actual factual in the wild virus was around 1990 and that was cdev which made exactly one copy of itself onto each mounted volume (hard drive, floppy) and caused no harm. I did have a virus scan running on my Mac OS X systems until recently when I found that it was causing frequent runaway CPU usage and so I have turned them off for now.
On the PC side there is a ton of software out there that will scan for free but not clean unless you pay - or some which can only be run manually unless you pay. I think most ISPs now provide free Anti-Virus (for PC at least) so that is a good place for most folks to start. My standard procedure on any PC machine I work on is to do the following:
1. get rid of any and all junk the user already had running.
2. make sure all windows and office updates and java, adobe, etc updates are done
3. run Malwarebytes.org anti-malware (found 1 thing on my work PC that enterprise Trendmicro Officescan missed)
4. run safety.live.com scanner (mostly I use the registry repair but will run the full scan on a machine that is suspect)
5. run housecall.trendmicro.com (can take a very long time on a slow machine which has not had regular maintenance)
6. install and run whatever your ISP provides - I use CA - but only their Anti-Virus and Anti-Spyware (most anti-spam software is kind of a pain and the firewall takes a lot of hands on to get configured properly)
7. run a disk clean up (and remove restore points)
8. run a disk defrag (often multiple times)
9. run everything again to be sure
On the Mac side
1. run Apple Software Update every so often
2. run Disk utilities Repair Permissions after major updates
3. that's about it - once a year or so hook the machine up in Firewire target mode and run DiskWarrior and defrag (if I remember to do it)
Years ago there was a product called White Knight (or at least that is the way I remember it) for pre-OS X Macs - that scanned for "virus like activity" which means things like a program writing over its own code - or an application writing to a system file. The basic idea was that properly coded software that has no malicious intent should not be doing those things - there were 6 separate categories. The main benefit was that it could catch a previously unknown virus without needing to know a single bit of the code responsible for the virus. One of the major problems with it was that nearly every piece of software published by Microsoft violated one or more of those rules just to function normally - and so you would have to grant MS software permission to do things that proper code should not be allowed to do - which then opened the door to a virus which either presented itself as the MS software or infected the MS software being allowed to do exactly the things you do not want a virus to do. There was another free anti-virus tool many years ago on Mac that I don't recall the name of, published by a team at a university I think, who finally gave up on it in part because the incidence of any actual virus activity on the Mac in the 1990s was very nearly non-existent. I did use Symantec and Norton tools for years through OS 9 - but ran into way too much trouble with Norton on early OS X to keep it.
To those without AV on Windows - I tried that on a couple slower Windows 2000 computers thinking that perhaps the way they are used and with older versions of IE etc the risk would be low - guess again - I am now in the process of making sure that every PC I am responsible for has a decent set of anti-malware tools running.
Comments
If you:
- have a small set of known, trusted websites you visit
- only install software from reputable companies (and not pirate copies)
- don't open strange emails
- keep backups
Then you should be ok. And if you're using a Mac you're almost certainly ok.
At work I'm on a Windows network (with just a few minor access issues) and live under a constant barrage of viruses, spy-ware, worms and trojans that keep taking out my colleagues' Windblows PCs (and USB drives). I think Apple might be worried about infection of the the Windows partition and/or might be getting ready to do battle with viruses on the iPhone (which is becoming a dominant and attractive platform for attacks), viruses which might migrate to the Mac since they're both OSX. I expect Apple to keep ahead of the nasties.
So could this mean that Apple has started receiving $$$ from Mcafee/Norton to start F*cking with the Mac users now. The only people that benefit from these viruses are these scumbags selling virus scams
Not entirely true. The people that make viruses stand to make money too, they are now used to set up botnets for sending spam or to sniff passwords from banking sites. Malware creation is now a shadow industry in itself.
I don't have AV software even on my PC...
If you:
- have a small set of known, trusted websites you visit
- only install software from reputable companies (and not pirate copies)
- don't open strange emails
- keep backups
Then you should be ok. And if you're using a Mac you're almost certainly ok.
Even trusted web sites can be hacked, though sticking to a few sites is a way to minimize exposure.
Another big way to minimize exposure is to use alternate web browsers. Internet Explorer is a big bogeyman.
I also think this is just Apple covering their arses, because if a Mac virus DID hit amidst all these "virus-free" claims, they would be sued into oblivion.
If you run Windows on a Mac, either by booting directly into Windows or running it on top of the Mac OS via Parallels or Fusion, the worst that can happen is that your Windows environment could be infected. My understanding is that the Windows environment is naturally quarantined.
For my purposes, Parallels works great because my entire Windows installation is contained in a single Mac file that I can back up along with the rest of my files. If I should happen to get a virus in Windows, I can just restore yesterday's backup and it's gone. In fact, I think that avoiding the whole Windows reinstallation ordeal might be the best thing about running it on a Mac.
I think you need to be careful with that! Recent Parallels and Fusion allow shared folders, maybe even by default. This exposes your mac home folder to Windows and its viruses. If Windows got a virus that tried to delete all files, the mac files in those folders would go too. OSX would be safe, and the mac unaffected. But, as I understand it, your files are not.
I address this by restricting the shared folders. I remove the user folder (or is it the users documents folder?) share and set up a new one to a folder within my documents folder. That, and any sub folders, is all Windows has access to.
Also, since Macs are renowned for being so overpriced, wouldn't it behooved nefarious SW developers to target machines that are typically bought by people with more money and who apparently are so arrogant that they brag about not needing virus protection software?
And why should virus authors care about how much money you have or your attitude? They are in a (very lucrative) business, and these supposed characteristics of the Mac User have no economical impact on their business model.
Nowadays, the main purposes of virus as an economical activity are mainly :
- building computer farms, that can be used for illegal activities thanks for the cumulated bandwidth and processing power : SPAM, code cracking, DoS attacks...
- gathering private information : credit card, bank account...
- gathering corporate information : infected computer can provide an access inside the company, and that access can be used to gather data. Data that can be used either to blackmail or to sell to competitors.
It makes sense to target PC/Windows. The market share argument is a valid one. Not only because you have a much bigger potential base to infect. But also because more computer means more exchanges between them, and faster and broader contamination.
Another explanation is that PC are dominant in corporations. And corporations mean more processing power, more bandwidth and potentially marketable information.
The profile of the PC user is also different from the profile of the Mac user. PC users tend to download illegal material more, to install lots of "funny" stuff... This makes it a more interesting platform to target.
You have to consider building virus as any other economic activity. On one hand, you have the cost and on the other the benefits. Building a Mac virus is more costly than building a PC one, and the potential benefits are much smaller. This doesn't mean that it is impossible for a virus to target the Mac, it just means that it's not as profitable as targetting the PC/Windows world...
There are no shortages of bottom feeding trial lawyers looking for a meal at Apple's treasury.
Think of the liability, if Apple wasn't cautioning users about security and the steps they should consider, when someone finally cracks OSX, and OSX malware finally breaks into the wild.
This is just smart business.
So basically, a company can say anything, and make any claims it wants as long as they follow it with a fine-print disclaimer worded in legalese? Wouldn't the more sensible approach be to not make such claims in the first place?
While everyone is bashing lawyers for initiating lawsuits, why aren't these people saying anything about the marketing departments that make questionable claims in the first place? Which lawyers are considered worse? The ones who file frivolous lawsuits or the ones who defend companies that engage in scumbag business practices?
For a virus to successfully target the Mac, it would have to use an innovative and unorthodox attack method.
If the virus is that smart, I doubt whether these dumb file scanners would do any good whatsoever.
C.
I think you need to be careful with that! Recent Parallels and Fusion allow shared folders, maybe even by default. This exposes your mac home folder to Windows and its viruses. If Windows got a virus that tried to delete all files, the mac files in those folders would go too. OSX would be safe, and the mac unaffected. But, as I understand it, your files are not.
I address this by restricting the shared folders. I remove the user folder (or is it the users documents folder?) share and set up a new one to a folder within my documents folder. That, and any sub folders, is all Windows has access to.
If it did wipe out your files you've always got yesterday's, and the day before, and the day before, etc. all the way back to when you first turned on Time Machine. You DO run Time Machine, right? Best protection you can have for an accidental wipe (or intentional, in the case of a Windows virus).
Safest thing to do though, if you're running Windows via Fusion you only grant Windows network access to/from the host Mac and use the Mac to d/l anything you need on the Windows side, then drag it from Mac to Windows' window. Works for me.
This newsarticle is wrong. The knowledge base article has been there for a while, it just was updated a few days ago. Click the link to the german or french version of the article (left side), the date those two were last changed is July 30, 2008.
I read a prior knowledge base article recommending AV sometime last summer (2007) and it didn't look new then either.
I back up my home folder every day and my entire computer every week ... I think this is more important than anti-virus software because it protects not only against viruses but against theft, drops, spills, hardware failure, and user error.
Unless the virus has a delay before it does anything and then all your backups will have the virus on them.
I see the point of Apple recommending Virus scanners, there may not be many at the mo and there haven't been any big ones. But the fact is most of the Mac market doesn't have any protection so when someone does come out with a big one it will spread through all of them and spread fast with nothing in its way.
I for one though don't really bother. The same goes for Windows as well, in all the years I've used windows (since 95) I've never had one Virus. I don't download crap and my ISP scans my emails for virus's so the risk is low.
As a fairly savvy computer user I (hope) that I can spot a phish or attempts at a trojan. Apple should move to providing an iSecure type package to help less confident users spot these scams. The recent anti-phishing work in Safari is a welcome example.
Any news on when Disinfectant's getting released again? ;-p http://homepage.mac.com/j.norstad/di...ant-retire.txt
While one of the first "Get a Mac" TV spots in 2006 made fun of Windows' susceptibility to viruses and portrayed the Mac as near-immune
My recollection of the ad was not that the Mac was immune, but rather that there were much more viruses for Windows than the Mac. Has this changed?
We Mac users need to move away from the term AV. As posters have already mention a virus is self-replicating, hasn't been seen on OS X ever and until such time I'm not wasting processor cycles.
As a fairly savvy computer user I (hope) that I can spot a phish or attempts at a trojan. Apple should move to providing an iSecure type package to help less confident users spot these scams. The recent anti-phishing work in Safari is a welcome example.
I think the catch-all term is now malware. Anti-malware software is probably more accurate. AV software doesn't just look for virus, generally they look for other forms of malware too.
It's interesting how Apple are advocating the use of more than one AntiVirus application. I am a native Windows and PC user, although I am writing this from my new MacBook White(!), and Windows users are advised to only use one virus scanner at a time as multiple ones installed can disable one another!
Also, as a native Windows user, my PC, Windows Tablet, Mac mini, and MacBook all have virus scanning software - it gives me piece of mind that I am safe!
I have spent many long hours cleaning malware from Windows machines - and I can tell you for sure that it often takes multiple products to do the job effectively - and in some cases those tools each have to be run multiple times to clean everything. Some of them do not search the system restore volumes for example. What you have to watch for is folks who don't know better and install so many different anti virus, anti spyware, anti etc etc etc that their system ends up spending 90% of its CPU cycles scanning files. I have personally seen cases where Norton was disabled by a virus. I have also seen too many cases where a user had anti-virus software that expired a year ago and was doing little to no good.
On Mac - the last time I saw an actual factual in the wild virus was around 1990 and that was cdev which made exactly one copy of itself onto each mounted volume (hard drive, floppy) and caused no harm. I did have a virus scan running on my Mac OS X systems until recently when I found that it was causing frequent runaway CPU usage and so I have turned them off for now.
On the PC side there is a ton of software out there that will scan for free but not clean unless you pay - or some which can only be run manually unless you pay. I think most ISPs now provide free Anti-Virus (for PC at least) so that is a good place for most folks to start. My standard procedure on any PC machine I work on is to do the following:
1. get rid of any and all junk the user already had running.
2. make sure all windows and office updates and java, adobe, etc updates are done
3. run Malwarebytes.org anti-malware (found 1 thing on my work PC that enterprise Trendmicro Officescan missed)
4. run safety.live.com scanner (mostly I use the registry repair but will run the full scan on a machine that is suspect)
5. run housecall.trendmicro.com (can take a very long time on a slow machine which has not had regular maintenance)
6. install and run whatever your ISP provides - I use CA - but only their Anti-Virus and Anti-Spyware (most anti-spam software is kind of a pain and the firewall takes a lot of hands on to get configured properly)
7. run a disk clean up (and remove restore points)
8. run a disk defrag (often multiple times)
9. run everything again to be sure
On the Mac side
1. run Apple Software Update every so often
2. run Disk utilities Repair Permissions after major updates
3. that's about it - once a year or so hook the machine up in Firewire target mode and run DiskWarrior and defrag (if I remember to do it)
Years ago there was a product called White Knight (or at least that is the way I remember it) for pre-OS X Macs - that scanned for "virus like activity" which means things like a program writing over its own code - or an application writing to a system file. The basic idea was that properly coded software that has no malicious intent should not be doing those things - there were 6 separate categories. The main benefit was that it could catch a previously unknown virus without needing to know a single bit of the code responsible for the virus. One of the major problems with it was that nearly every piece of software published by Microsoft violated one or more of those rules just to function normally - and so you would have to grant MS software permission to do things that proper code should not be allowed to do - which then opened the door to a virus which either presented itself as the MS software or infected the MS software being allowed to do exactly the things you do not want a virus to do. There was another free anti-virus tool many years ago on Mac that I don't recall the name of, published by a team at a university I think, who finally gave up on it in part because the incidence of any actual virus activity on the Mac in the 1990s was very nearly non-existent. I did use Symantec and Norton tools for years through OS 9 - but ran into way too much trouble with Norton on early OS X to keep it.
To those without AV on Windows - I tried that on a couple slower Windows 2000 computers thinking that perhaps the way they are used and with older versions of IE etc the risk would be low - guess again - I am now in the process of making sure that every PC I am responsible for has a decent set of anti-malware tools running.