There are two FREEWARE options for killing off these TWO (and only two) malware:
A) ClamXav
PC Tools iAnti-Virus
I ran ClamXav to see if I was infected. The fact that I wasn't didn't surprise me, but the results at the end stating that their are 468,953 known viruses did.
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.
...
Macs don't contribute to the bottomlines of their owners? The average corporate Windows machine is more likely to be used by its wage slaves. The average Mac is more likely to be used by its creative professionals. You believe that the wage slave's computer is a richer target than that of the creative professional?
Quote:
Originally Posted by Lictor
... The market share argument is a valid one. ...
Repeating a nonsense argument is not the same thing as producing evidence to support the argument.
I ran ClamXav to see if I was infected. The fact that I wasn't didn't surprise me, but the results at the end stating that their are 468,953 known viruses did.
------ SCAN SUMMARY ------
Known viruses: 468953
Engine version: 0.94.2
Scanned directories: 17762
Scanned files: 55836
Infected files: 0
I believe nearly all of those are PC-only and are only scanned for on the Mac as they might be in a file on the Mac though they cannot do any harm on the Mac - they can be spread. While I am not sure I thought the list of potential exploits on Mac OS X was somewhere around 10 with none of them able to spread without direct user interaction and administrator password authentication.
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.
I'm 98% sure that Fusion 2 (which I run) has shared folders on by default, but read-only, not read/write. So in theory the virus couldn't do anything to the OSX files.
Also to address the overall topic: I don't really want to run AV at this point, however I do run Trend's Housecall every once and awhile just to make sure. It's nice because you don't have to install anything, just go to the website and it runs from there.
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 think what Apple means by using multiple applications is that Mac users as a whole use different ones, not that an individual Mac user uses multiple. This way virus writers have a harder time penetrating and spreading the viruses from one machine to another. Maybe even in your home, you can run different ones on different machines if you have more than one Mac.
However, I don't recommend Symantec's Norton Anti-Virus for Mac. I've not read many positive things about it. The biggest complaint is that it installs stuff all over your Mac and is hard to uninstall.
I've been most pleased with Intego Virus Barrier as it leaves a small footprint. You'll probably forget that it's on your machine until you see it updating. I used V4 and then stopped using it when Time Machine came out because they were conflicting. However, I hear that adding the TM back up drive to VB's scanning exception list fixes the issue.
(I don't work for Intego, just relating a personal experience).
One of the most sensible posts I have read in a long time with a touch of practical advice thrown in for good measure.
lilgto64 touches on a lot of stuff. A few things I would like to add to the mix. I read an article this last few days (can't find the damn thing and not even in my history so if it strikes a chord with someone could they please post the link?) regarding botnets and how the Anti Virus companies were singularly failing in stopping them because of the techniques they use to mask what they do and that the major vendors were having little to no impact. There is where the real future danger may lie. At the moment I hear nothing to suggest that they will have an impact of OS X but who knows? If the AV companies cannot cope with this then we could be in for serious trouble.
I too support a reasonable sized network. I always had AV software installed even on the Macs even though they outnumber the Windows boxes by at least 4:1. We use Sophos installed on to a Windows Server and all the clients get their updates from that. So far it has been successful in so far as when a Mac sees a virus it is obviously always a Windows one, however as has been stated here I see that as a good way to get rid of any Windows virus as it in a "sterile" environment on the Mac and in my book easier to be got rid of than if it were already on a PC. That is the principal reason we also put Sophos on to our Macs, to better protect the PCs. lilgto64's methods will also be a tool in my future arsenal and for that I thank him.
I want to take up the point of Macs being excluded by their market share. I really don't agree even though Lictor does bring up some valid points. In a sense that they are uneconomical to build is due to the OS being that much more secure and difficult to break down. However safety by obscurity doesn't follow. If that were the case then no viruses pre OS X should also surely not have existed and they did. The software that lilgto64 could not remember the name of I think was called Disenfectant. It was our primary weapon against viruses so they did exist and could replicate themselves even by putting in an infected floppy disk meant it could copy itself on to the uninfected drive. However I do agree with Lictor that it is just too much in the way of hard work to get what they need. But that a Mac user is in some way less of an economic target, I just don't buy.
And we did get a Mac virus that caused some harm. Back in the day when Aldus produced Pagemaker we were running a demonstration with a company representative from Aldus with a large audience of people. He was demonstrating the latest release that no one had and it was a pre-build. He could not get it to install and work. After over an hour trying to I thought to run Disenfectant, it found a virus, got rid of it and the install worked just in time for the start of the demo. Lots of sweat running there I can tell you. So a malicious virus was there and nearly caused a lot of harm.
Trojans and keyloggers do exist for OSX. And many WoW players have gotten burned by a keylogger.
That said I run both operating system, Leopard and Vista and have never had a windows virus in my life. I have been known to visit sites that you may suspect are full of viruses but have never been infected. You really have to intentionally give yourself a virus these days. Stupid people opening every stupid email attachment they get, installing all sorts of those stupid toolbars and other nonsense.
Viruses in a windows environment are not hard to avoid. Most people are just uneducated and paranoid.
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.
Unless you have any folders shared with Windows. In which case, any and all files (not executables, unless you're storing Windows binaries in there) are susceptible to whatever the malware does. If it's the kind of malware that wipes files, they're equally wipeable.
Important: Information about products not manufactured by Apple is provided for information purposes only and does not constitute Apple’s recommendation or endorsement. Please contact the vendor for additional information.
I would guess that this is all lawyer-instigated since even an implicit claim of invincibility might be used in the courts. This is mostly a legal CYA action IMHO.
Agree that there may be a lot of legal talk here getting blown up as news, but I think this makes it all the more significant that Oracle dare to advertise their systems as "Unbreakable" in massive ads in The Economist and airports. I work with Oracle's enterprise systems and everything Oracle do there, Apple could do in their own systems. to take computer security to the next level. I wish Steve Jobs would talk tech to Larry Ellison more often - about various things. In the same way that Micro-softTarget have ignored file security for decades, so Apple ignore App security. Come on Apple! You have a great selling point, but you have to push the envelope to stay ahead and keep us safe.
[QUOTE=Haggar;1344846]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?
Not if you're a quack. While the government require them to say, "This product is not intended to cure, treat, prevent, ....any disease" the rest of their advertising suggests just the opposite and these products are marketed to people who flunked science and logic
Anyway, the sky is not falling and it likely will never be. All Apple has to do is keep the number of services with root privileges down to a minimum, and keep those services exploit free.
I would like to see Apple push this further, with each app having a separate 'user' that runs it, giving it only the permissions it requires for its job (provided thru online app delivery). If my typing course asks to do anything that is unrelated to teaching me typing, I want OSX to say NO!
Bullsh*it! and stop spreading FUD! There are NO keyloggers for OSX, none! If you have any evidence to the contrary then post it here and now or STFU! And by evidence I don't mean inane threads posted by WOW idiots who've installed Windows on their mac and then bitch about having their account information stolen. I've seen these threads and all they are evidence of is what happen to a human brain when exposed to the peverted mediocrity of Winblows for years!
Quote:
Originally Posted by archer75
Trojans and keyloggers do exist for OSX. And many WoW players have gotten burned by a keylogger.
That said I run both operating system, Leopard and Vista and have never had a windows virus in my life. I have been known to visit sites that you may suspect are full of viruses but have never been infected. You really have to intentionally give yourself a virus these days. Stupid people opening every stupid email attachment they get, installing all sorts of those stupid toolbars and other nonsense.
Viruses in a windows environment are not hard to avoid. Most people are just uneducated and paranoid.
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.
Comments
That's it, I'm done with Apple, I'm going to switch to Mapple.
Once SL comes out, you'll need to change this to SLApple!
Seriously, thanks for the comments. Very helpful to understand what is and is not going on in the AV world.
There are two FREEWARE options for killing off these TWO (and only two) malware:
A) ClamXav
I ran ClamXav to see if I was infected. The fact that I wasn't didn't surprise me, but the results at the end stating that their are 468,953 known viruses did.
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.
...
Macs don't contribute to the bottomlines of their owners? The average corporate Windows machine is more likely to be used by its wage slaves. The average Mac is more likely to be used by its creative professionals. You believe that the wage slave's computer is a richer target than that of the creative professional?
... The market share argument is a valid one. ...
Repeating a nonsense argument is not the same thing as producing evidence to support the argument.
I ran ClamXav to see if I was infected. The fact that I wasn't didn't surprise me, but the results at the end stating that their are 468,953 known viruses did.
I believe nearly all of those are PC-only and are only scanned for on the Mac as they might be in a file on the Mac though they cannot do any harm on the Mac - they can be spread. While I am not sure I thought the list of potential exploits on Mac OS X was somewhere around 10 with none of them able to spread without direct user interaction and administrator password authentication.
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.
I'm 98% sure that Fusion 2 (which I run) has shared folders on by default, but read-only, not read/write. So in theory the virus couldn't do anything to the OSX files.
Also to address the overall topic: I don't really want to run AV at this point, however I do run Trend's Housecall every once and awhile just to make sure. It's nice because you don't have to install anything, just go to the website and it runs from there.
http://housecall65.trendmicro.com/
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 think what Apple means by using multiple applications is that Mac users as a whole use different ones, not that an individual Mac user uses multiple. This way virus writers have a harder time penetrating and spreading the viruses from one machine to another. Maybe even in your home, you can run different ones on different machines if you have more than one Mac.
However, I don't recommend Symantec's Norton Anti-Virus for Mac. I've not read many positive things about it. The biggest complaint is that it installs stuff all over your Mac and is hard to uninstall.
I've been most pleased with Intego Virus Barrier as it leaves a small footprint. You'll probably forget that it's on your machine until you see it updating. I used V4 and then stopped using it when Time Machine came out because they were conflicting. However, I hear that adding the TM back up drive to VB's scanning exception list fixes the issue.
(I don't work for Intego, just relating a personal experience).
One of the most sensible posts I have read in a long time with a touch of practical advice thrown in for good measure.
lilgto64 touches on a lot of stuff. A few things I would like to add to the mix. I read an article this last few days (can't find the damn thing and not even in my history so if it strikes a chord with someone could they please post the link?) regarding botnets and how the Anti Virus companies were singularly failing in stopping them because of the techniques they use to mask what they do and that the major vendors were having little to no impact. There is where the real future danger may lie. At the moment I hear nothing to suggest that they will have an impact of OS X but who knows? If the AV companies cannot cope with this then we could be in for serious trouble.
I too support a reasonable sized network. I always had AV software installed even on the Macs even though they outnumber the Windows boxes by at least 4:1. We use Sophos installed on to a Windows Server and all the clients get their updates from that. So far it has been successful in so far as when a Mac sees a virus it is obviously always a Windows one, however as has been stated here I see that as a good way to get rid of any Windows virus as it in a "sterile" environment on the Mac and in my book easier to be got rid of than if it were already on a PC. That is the principal reason we also put Sophos on to our Macs, to better protect the PCs. lilgto64's methods will also be a tool in my future arsenal and for that I thank him.
I want to take up the point of Macs being excluded by their market share. I really don't agree even though Lictor does bring up some valid points. In a sense that they are uneconomical to build is due to the OS being that much more secure and difficult to break down. However safety by obscurity doesn't follow. If that were the case then no viruses pre OS X should also surely not have existed and they did. The software that lilgto64 could not remember the name of I think was called Disenfectant. It was our primary weapon against viruses so they did exist and could replicate themselves even by putting in an infected floppy disk meant it could copy itself on to the uninfected drive. However I do agree with Lictor that it is just too much in the way of hard work to get what they need. But that a Mac user is in some way less of an economic target, I just don't buy.
And we did get a Mac virus that caused some harm. Back in the day when Aldus produced Pagemaker we were running a demonstration with a company representative from Aldus with a large audience of people. He was demonstrating the latest release that no one had and it was a pre-build. He could not get it to install and work. After over an hour trying to I thought to run Disenfectant, it found a virus, got rid of it and the install worked just in time for the start of the demo. Lots of sweat running there I can tell you. So a malicious virus was there and nearly caused a lot of harm.
History lesson over!
That said I run both operating system, Leopard and Vista and have never had a windows virus in my life. I have been known to visit sites that you may suspect are full of viruses but have never been infected. You really have to intentionally give yourself a virus these days. Stupid people opening every stupid email attachment they get, installing all sorts of those stupid toolbars and other nonsense.
Viruses in a windows environment are not hard to avoid. Most people are just uneducated and paranoid.
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.
Unless you have any folders shared with Windows. In which case, any and all files (not executables, unless you're storing Windows binaries in there) are susceptible to whatever the malware does. If it's the kind of malware that wipes files, they're equally wipeable.
Right at the end, Apple uses this stock caveat:
Important: Information about products not manufactured by Apple is provided for information purposes only and does not constitute Apple’s recommendation or endorsement. Please contact the vendor for additional information.
I would guess that this is all lawyer-instigated since even an implicit claim of invincibility might be used in the courts. This is mostly a legal CYA action IMHO.
Agree that there may be a lot of legal talk here getting blown up as news, but I think this makes it all the more significant that Oracle dare to advertise their systems as "Unbreakable" in massive ads in The Economist and airports. I work with Oracle's enterprise systems and everything Oracle do there, Apple could do in their own systems. to take computer security to the next level. I wish Steve Jobs would talk tech to Larry Ellison more often - about various things. In the same way that Micro-softTarget have ignored file security for decades, so Apple ignore App security. Come on Apple! You have a great selling point, but you have to push the envelope to stay ahead and keep us safe.
Not if you're a quack. While the government require them to say, "This product is not intended to cure, treat, prevent, ....any disease" the rest of their advertising suggests just the opposite and these products are marketed to people who flunked science and logic
Anyway, the sky is not falling and it likely will never be. All Apple has to do is keep the number of services with root privileges down to a minimum, and keep those services exploit free.
I would like to see Apple push this further, with each app having a separate 'user' that runs it, giving it only the permissions it requires for its job (provided thru online app delivery). If my typing course asks to do anything that is unrelated to teaching me typing, I want OSX to say NO!
No one has ever seen this stuff or can accurately describe it.
I think I am going to install anti dark matter software on my Mac, just in case.
2) If I did install an antivirus software, I wouldn't allow it to automatically scan my machine. I'd manually request the scan.
As one person said, antivirus software is just as much a virus as any virus software.
Trojans and keyloggers do exist for OSX. And many WoW players have gotten burned by a keylogger.
That said I run both operating system, Leopard and Vista and have never had a windows virus in my life. I have been known to visit sites that you may suspect are full of viruses but have never been infected. You really have to intentionally give yourself a virus these days. Stupid people opening every stupid email attachment they get, installing all sorts of those stupid toolbars and other nonsense.
Viruses in a windows environment are not hard to avoid. Most people are just uneducated and paranoid.
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.