Mac's Immunity To Recent Virus Attacks

bluepinstripe writes " An article over at MacCentral references two articles about the Mac's immunity to the recent virus attacks." This is nothing new, but worthy of note, from time to time, such as now.

Comments

Re:bad analogy

[mhesseltine]

Macs aren't "vaccinated" against Windows-based e-mail viruses or worms.

Agreed. It just seems like people brag about something that is painfully obvious (Macs don't get affected by Outlook viruses; people who are vaccinated against polio don't get polio)

Saying Macs are "immune" in this case is about like saying my car is immune to Polio. It just doesn't apply in this case. Macs won't be "immune" to Mac-based viruses, when they come along.

Again, agreed.

Anyone dumb enough to launch an executable e-mail attachment without first virus-scanning it is dumb enough to do it on any platform they run. Bragging about Macs not being susceptible to this round of viruses is merely bragging about how few Macs there are, and how it isn't worth the time of the virus-writers to make Mac-based viruses. Whoopee.

And this leads to another point. Why do we call them "Windows" viruses. It isn't a function of Windows, per se, that allows this to happen. It's a function of Outlook and OE that causes the problem. If mail.App ran binary attachments without a scan, Macs would be just as vulnerable as Windows machines.

We should start calling them Outlook viruses. Put the blame where it belongs, on the bad email applications.

Why so nasty about Macs?

[GreatDrok]

I don't get all these nasty comments about Macs. I don't actually own one, been a Linux user since 1994 and before that I was a SUNOS guy. Never really liked Macs but I could see that people found them easy to use so that was fine. OSX is by far the best of both worlds, my next laptop is almost certainly going to be a powerbook, doesn't mean I won't continue to like Linux, its all UNIX, its all good.

The one thing I find odd is the lie that is simplicity. Macs are a doddle to use and yet they are clearly also nice secure systems. Windows is less easy to use and yet easier to write viruses and trojans for. Chewbacca defense? It does not make sense! If Macs were as common as PCs they still wouldn't suffer the same level of viruses and worms as Windows does. Same is true for Linux. Besides which, what if we had 25% Windows, 25% Linux, 25% Macs and 25% others. I bet Windows would still have by far the greatest number of viruses etc.

Cool off guys. Macs are good. Its all UNIX and that is good. A little bit more of this and Windows will be the minority just as it should be.