On Jun 28, 2005, at 1:18 PM, Ge' wrote:
Hi all,
You might want to look at the dates in these things:
I wanted to know more exactly, so I searched a bit for info about
Mac viruses:
http://www.icsalabs.com/html/communities/antivirus/macvirus.shtml
This page isn't even being served properly. All I see is the raw
HTML, revealing the following:
<!-- COPYRIGHT 1997-2001 WEBSIDESTORY, INC
http://www.faqs.org/faqs/computer-virus/macintosh-faq/
"Viruses and the Macintosh
=========================
by David Harley
Version 1.6b: 7th January 2000 "
Both reference the same study, which was done in the 90's.
From those texts, you'll get a feeling for the 'danger' pending over
Mac users: The stats are that a Mac is at least 1000 times less
prone to
pick up a virus as a PC.
So the risk is not zero, and in certain cases, you'll want to install
something like Norton AV for Mac, but in general, don't worry.
The risk for a virus in OS X is ZERO. Nil. Zip. Bupkis. Nada.
Norton AV. like the rest of their products is crap; selling AV
software on the mac is tantamount to fraud.
In the last four or five years here, we've had ONE incident of Word
Macro viruses showing up here (Mac or PC clients), when someone dug
some very old disks up and asked me why Word said there were macros
in the file and didn't open it.
I don't run AV software on my macs, and haven't since the demise of
Disinfectant.
The usual canard 'We could pass them along to PC users' is entirely
bogus: first, you would have to deliberately craft the e-mail message
to infect a PC with a forwarded message, and second, any Windows user
WITHOUT up-to-the-minute AV protection is probably already infected.
It was just apalling to read MacUser's round up of antivirus apps
recently where they danced all around the issue that Mac AV products
do NOTHING: even the screen shots only showed PC viruses in people's
inboxes. Think an entire article devoted to products that DO NOTHING,
and they came up with an Editors Choice.
(and they didn't even have the decency to include the Open Source
ClamAV: if you're going to waste CPU cycles on an antivirus program,
at LEAST don't PAY for the privilege! <http://www.markallan.co.uk/
clamXav/> )
Methinks LOTS of folk's are patronizing the Emperor's tailor these
days. Heck, he's probably had to outsource to third-world sweatshops
to keep up with demand!
In the past, there were some Mac viruses, and Mac AV software. I
have been working in an all-Mac environment in those days and
viruses were an issue. But now that those older OSes are getting
rarer, viruses die a natural death: They depend on being able to
spread before they are detected, and that balance is way off nowadays.
About OS X: Read what the experts say:
http://macdailynews.com/index.php/weblog/comments/5268/
ROFLMAO!
I love this quote:
""How do I know there are no Mac OS X viruses and malware out there?
Because the Mac product manager of one of the major security software
companies told me so. And when people tell me I don't need their
product, I usually take them at their word,""
Unfortunately he falls down in the rest of the article by saying "Hey
you might just need it" and the hoary old chestnut that the reason
there are no Mac viruses is the small size of their market share.
Market share != installed systems. Market share is what percentage of
new computers that were sold over the last X time period, to all
customers. (including corporate customers buying thousands of Dells
at a time, and who no longer represent the majority of virus-infected
computers. Home users with high speed connections do.)
When Mac represented 30% of the market, only a handful of viruses
affected them, compared to *thousands* for DOS.
The current best estimate of viruses affecting PC's is around 20,000.
I'll be insanely generous and say ok, only *half* of those will
affect current systems. 10,000 viruses.
All the windoids love to laugh at the Mac's 'puny 3% market share'.
Ok, we'll give 'em that.
A straight market share:viruses estimate would mean that you would
expect there to be 0.03 * 10,000 Mac viruses: 300 of them. There are
47 known Mac virus variants.
That means that the 'market share' model OVERestimates the Mac virus
count by over SIX TIMES.
Moreover, since I stipulated 'affecting current systems' for the PC
viruses, they overestimate it by, oh, what's this? a divide by ZERO
error?
Macs don't have malware and viruses because the design of the
operating system prevents the kind of exploits used in the Windows
world.
I'm starting to sound like a broken record here, but the crux of the
security problem in Windows is that if you have admin rights,
permission to do things is PRESUMED. In OS X, permission to ASK to do
things is presumed.
Windows:
Malware: is user so-n-so an admin? Cool, I install myself.
User: "doo be doo be doo be doo. HEY! Where is my naked picture of
britney and what's this virus doing in my system?"
Mac:
Malware: is user so-n-so an admin? Cool, er,I can, well, ask pretty
please. "Hey Can I please install myself?"
User: "Why the heck does a naked picture of britney need Admin
permission be viewed?"
Like all analogies, it will break if pushed, but as a simple
illustration of the different security models, it works. It exposes
the user as the achilles heel of security but the user is ALWAYS the
achilles heel of security.
However, OS X is an Achilles with 2 legs and a good conditioning
regimen, Windows is a freakin' millipede who thinks exercise is
getting up from the couch to get another beer...
--
Bruce Johnson
This is the sig who says 'Ni!'
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