I went out of my way to say that I was not saying "never". Today, Mac
OS X is not an attractive target for bad guys and that has a lot to do
with it. It is also true that Mac OS X is built on a pretty solid
foundation (BSD Unix, which has been around a very long time) and has a
security model that limits the ability of things to do damage. If you
look at the road map, they are building even more things into the OS to
try and make it more secure. Is it perfect? Certainly not, but it is
pretty doggone safe out of the box TODAY.
I am not trying to protract any kind of disagreement. I am not saying
all you guys should switch over, and I am not saying you should not run
any kind of AV protection on your company's Macs should you have them
(again...ClamAV). I am just trying to interject some perspective from
someone who has been using the Mac OS ("classic" and then OS X) for
going on 20 years now and also happens have been administering a decent
sized Windows network for well over a decade.
I hope that some of the conversation has been a help to the OP.
________________________________
From: Sherry Abercrombie [mailto:[email protected]]
Sent: Friday, May 01, 2009 3:40 PM
To: NT System Admin Issues
Subject: Re: MAC AV
Never say never......back in the early 90's I was taking a class at our
local junior college via modem. At the intro session, someone raised
the question when told that we would be sharing documents about the
possibility of getting a virus. The instructor informed him and the
rest of the class that Word documents couldn't get viruses. Within a
week of that session, the news hit about the first ever Word macro virus
infecting Word documents. I emailed him the article about it, but he
never responded......moral of the story, never ever say that XX OS or XX
platform cannot be infected by a virus/malware/trojan. Eventually
someone will take up the challenge and prove you wrong.
On Fri, May 1, 2009 at 2:15 PM, Mayo, Bill <[email protected]>
wrote:
It's splitting hairs, but a Word macro virus is not a "Mac
virus". There were a handful of Mac virii back in the pre-OS X days,
but they were all handled rather readily by the free Disinfectant.
There have been sporadic claims of a virii that affect Mac OS X since it
came out, but once you dug down into the details what you find is that
they were more accurately classified as trojans. Sticking to the strict
definition of a virus, I am fairly certain that there are no confirmed
ones on Mac OS X (AV vendors sales tactics notwithstanding). That isn't
to say that they aren't possible or that there aren't some clever folks
that haven't been discovered, of course. There are vulnerabilities, as
there are with any system, and I am certainly not saying that you have
no need to ever be concerned if you have a Mac. However, when you
compare the number of virii and other types of malware that affect
Windows versus those that affect Mac OS X, it is a drop in the ocean.
And as for the macro virus situation, I would point out that
most of Word macro virii exposed other issues on Windows or targeted
specific Windows files and were a non-issue if executed on a Mac.
Nonetheless, there are a couple of solutions. My preferred solution is
not use Microsoft Office at all (it is not standard on a Mac and
ridiculously expensive). You can also use the free ClamAV, as I
indicated before.
I understand that this is a Windows administration list, and
that is my job as well. But every time someone asks something about
supporting a Mac, there is a lot of FUD thrown around. On this
particular topic, yes it is true that there is a small amount of malware
that can affect Macs. However, with a little bit of common sense, you
can pretty much use a Mac and not have to worry about it. That may not
be true a week or a month from now, but it is disingenous to suggest
that there is some equivalency in the threats against Windows and Mac OS
X.
-----Original Message-----
From: Ben Scott [mailto:[email protected]]
Sent: Friday, May 01, 2009 2:56 PM
To: NT System Admin Issues
Subject: Re: MAC AV
On Fri, May 1, 2009 at 10:55 AM, Jon Harris
<[email protected]> wrote:
> Haven't the Mac users in your network told you? Mac's don't
get
> malware of any type.
I had a client once who was an all Mac shop for a while. They
believed that.
We were hired to install a Windows server and some Windows
desktops for stuff what was 'doze only. We, of course, installed a
managed anti-virus solution.
It was rather interesting to watch the Windows anti-virus
quarantine every pre-existing Word document they tried to open, as every
single last one was infected with a Word macro virus.
But Mac's don't get viruses. They blamed the PCs.
-- Ben
~ Finally, powerful endpoint security that ISN'T a resource hog!
~ ~ <http://www.sunbeltsoftware.com/Business/VIPRE-Enterprise/> ~
~ Finally, powerful endpoint security that ISN'T a resource hog!
~
~ <http://www.sunbeltsoftware.com/Business/VIPRE-Enterprise/> ~
--
Sherry Abercrombie
"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic."
Arthur C. Clarke
Sent from Haslet, TX, United States
~ Finally, powerful endpoint security that ISN'T a resource hog! ~
~ <http://www.sunbeltsoftware.com/Business/VIPRE-Enterprise/> ~
