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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.
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I would have had first post, but my computer was infected with MSBlast!
they still have to worry about the excess traffic generated.
my own company's mail server (which has an AV on it to check attachments) got the equivalent of a DDoS because of all the people who have us in their address books.
we ourselves did not get infected, but our mail server sure was (is still) sluggish.
So join the crusade. Give your mom a mac!
A Multiplayer Strategy Game for Mac OS X, Windows, and Linux
Macs aren't "vaccinated" against Windows-based e-mail viruses or worms.
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.
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.
I'm still saving up money for a G5, though it has nothing to do with how susceptible to viruses it is or isn't.
Wrong. A virus that exploits a cross-platform program such as Mozilla can infect multiple platforms.
A well-known class of Win-Mac viruses are the Microsoft Office macro viruses. MS Office is available for both Windows and Macintosh, and the versions for both platforms accept the same documents and viruses. With so few Mac-specific viruses available, these macro viruses were once the biggest threats to Mac users, but only those who had certain Microsoft programs. Now these viruses are forgotten as newer Office versions protect against macro viruses.
==========
There are two types of people: those who are in the world, and those who aren't.
It depends on if you count worms, and what you consider "part of the OS".
Lots of software run on Linux/BSD/other unix-like systems, so if a worm uses a flaw in that software, can you really call it a Linux problem?
It's not as clear cut as it is in the proprietary software world. where programs generally run on one platform only, and MS/Apple bundles tons of stuff tightly with the OS.
There have been a couple honest to goodness Linux viruses, but none that I know of have ever spread widely. If you count worms that exploit only Linux, that have made it very far in the wild, you could probably count them on one hand.
I've had enough abrasive sigs. Kittens are cute and fuzzy.
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.
"I have the attention span of a strobe lit goldfish, please get to the point quickly!"
Mac's seem to be immune from viruses not because Mac's are totally secure, it's due to the fact that the clowns that write viruses HATE Microsoft and want MS to look bad. Every OS has holes of some sort. No software is perfect.
"Patriotism is supporting your country all the time, and your government when it deserves it." Mark Twain.
Actually, we have fun at work with all the viruses and worms. I have my TiBook at home and don't really care about anything (obviously). Here at work I'm using Windows. Every time an email comes in, me or my officemate will read the subject name and who it's from and then try to guess what the contents are. "Generic Viagara" is a common one. Then if there's an attachment, try to guess if it's a .pif or .scr. You should try it. And then go home, hop on your Mac, and be productive again.
"He uses statistics as a drunken man uses lampposts...for support rather than illumination." - Andrew Lang
What I wouldn't give for a shiny little app that identifies these and autoresponds to the postmaster and abuse addresses with "I'm on a Mac, you insufferable bint. You're a sysadmin, for god's sake. You should know that SoBig.F spoofs the FROM: line. I am not infected with this virus, you are dumb, and I have notified your superiors that you have absolutely no clue as to how to run a mail server and that you should be fired. I hear the U.S. Army is hiring."
They could call it iSmackYouUpsideTheHead.
Obliteracy: Words with explosions
(Yes, I know -- mod me down because I won't drink the Kool Aid... but I -did- just order myself an iPod for use with Linux.) :-)
> If you count worms that exploit only Linux, that have made it
> very far in the wild, you could probably count them on one hand.
OTOH, if you count worms that exploit unix-like systems in general,
you'll get a somewhat larger number. There have been quite a few
worms over the years that spread through unix-based software such
as sendmail. Naturally, most of them won't work on current versions.
Then again, that 50 number for Mac systems is low if you count
historical viruses that would no longer work on modern Mac systems.
Back in the day when all Macs still sported floppy drives and ran
a single-user out of the box, there were quite a large number of
Mac file viruses.
So if you only count malcode that's in the wild and will work
on current versions... there aren't many, except for Windows.
Cut that out, or I will ship you to Norilsk in a box.
Just the GPL.
you'd be suprised...
Altough most are worms, there are about 50-60 virus existing.
Symantec: 1592 results found (includes articles)
Mcafee: found 58 record(s) matching
I live in Soviet Canuckistan you insensitive clod!
From another article I read a week ago. The 50 was really for OS 9 and earlier. The old OS is a very insecure OS, with little interms of memory protection, and multi-user access levels, but was left alone given low usage levels.
OS X however inherites from BSD, so it also inherited all the fixes to past problems in BSD, which is mainly used as an Enterprise Unix solution. And also keep in mind it is a new operating system, version 10.2 has only been around for just over a year. That said, it does come with a more secure default configuration, with most services disabled by default, which is the weakness of most Unix and Linux systems, since they're usually deployed as servers and have most of their services on by default.
Mac OS X uses micro kernel technology. This provides better memory protection between applications, and the ability to sperate the OS into different components and levels. This becomes key when updating the OS. Most updates, since it does not involve the micro kernel, a complete system restart isn't necessary. The micro kernel will continue to run while the rest of the OS is patched in restarted, reducing start up time for kernel updates.
I run a small on-site computer consulting company, and a local station (KOIN-6 in Portland) called to ask if they could come along on a service call to remove the worm, and film it (with the client's permission, of course.) So I found a client willing to do it, and met the news people there.
As part of the (short) interview, they asked how to avoid it, and I mentioned that Macintoshes and Linux machines were immune. That made it on the news. (Along with very little else of my interview.)
Another non-functioning site was "uncertainty.microsoft.com."
The purpose of that site was not known.
Would it not be possible to write a virus in AppleScript that took entries from the AddressBook and used them to send itself out to the rest of the world via Mail.app? Legitimate question. If the answer is "Yes" then why is Mac OS X more resistant to viruses than Windows/OutLook? Could it be that Mac OS X is only like 2% of the market and thus not a significant target?
Stuart Eichert
Am i the only one that thinks this article should be on the front page?
Macs derive some benefit from their approach to "administrator rights". I've got them, but to actually do anything, I need to type a password.
On Windows (at least W2K) if you need administrator privileges, then they're on all the time. Accidentally run a virus while in administrator mode, and it gets to use those administrator privileges, too.
For both points, you are referring to problems that have to be opened up explicitly. By default, all those excellent remote user capabilities are turned off, and the one place that uses fb_realpath() (the FTP server) is off by default.
The situation on X is not as good as it was with, for example, 7.0, where getting anything remotely exploitable up demanded a multi-digit number of clues, but it is still many steps back from the default Windows situation. After all, who outside of Redmond is conscious of the fact that every Windows machine is running a DCOM RPC endpoint mapper?
True, but only to a point.
The earliest macro virus, concept (1995), ran rampant on both Macs and PCs (despite the fact that MS Office 4 for Mac was a Piece of Sh*t) before Office had macro detectors.
Since then, almost all macro viruses in Word and Excel documents create havoc only on Windows operating systems because the viruses make procedural and path calls that work only on Windows, such as going to a directory path on C: drive, or activating a function that requires the full Visual Basic or ActiveX functionality found in Windows but stunted or non-existant in the Mac version of Office.
The Mac version of Office screams bloody murder when it detects macros and warns the user. If a modern macro virus is let to run on a Mac OS system, it fails to run or runs only to a point.
A point that should be made throughout all this virus hoopla is that while Macintosh users are generally immune from any direct attack from PC viruses, a Macintosh user can be a "typhoid Mary" style carrier by passing along a virus from an email or infected file. Also, due the SOBIG virus and BLASTER, everyone, including Macs, suffer from the Internet slowdowns that affect the servers that manage it, as well as intranet slowdowns in businesses.
Vos teneo officium eram periculosus ut vos recipero is.
So not only is my Mac immune to Windows viruses; it also helps those viruses destroy Windows machines?
So what's the downside?
I didn't see anyone pointing out that Apple has an excellent automated software update mechanism in place, which by default looks weeky for updates and asks if users want them. If you hit return rather than cancel, you get your update. No sysadmin assistance is required, but that factor in Mac adoption is another story. Some users will reject an update because they don't want to take the chance that it requires a reboot (most security patches do not, but other updates often do). But at least during virus scares, the updates are likely to be accepted. If Macs were more common, it seems like the necessary updates would be in place more universally than they are among Windows users.
Can anyone comment on how effective the comparable process is for PC, Linux, Unix, and whether there is a differential between these and the Mac update process?
ThosEM