Should Mac Users Run Antivirus Software?

adamengst sends in an article from TidBITS in which Macintosh security expert Rich Mogull explains why he doesn't use antivirus software on the Mac, and why most Mac users shouldn't bother with it either. The article also touches on the question of when an increasing Mac market share might tip it over an inflection point into more active attention from malware writers. (Last month Apple had 14% of PC sales, but 25% of dollar value.)

Comments

Re:Then Rich Mogull Ain't No Security Expert

[pandrijeczko]

Any computer expert doesn't need anti-virus. As a matter of a fact, anyone remotely computer savvy doesn't need anti-virus. As long as you keep your patches up to date you're basically as secure as you can be from viruses assuming you don't allow the virus in.

Please do not say that in any interview you may ever attend for an IT security job. You need to Google for "zero-day exploits" which essentially means the time between an exploit being discovered and it being patched.

I have run without anti-virus for about 15 years or so and I have only been infected with two viruses.

As I said in my other reply, that probably has a lot more to do with a sensible approach to not using software like IE or Outlook that embeds itself deeply within Windows - avoiding the reasons that allow a virus to propogate on your PCs does not make you immune to getting one, it just reduces the chances.

Re:No

[brainphat]

Surely I'm not the first to get my dander up every time I come across the smugness that can only come from owning a mac. I can't tell you how many times I've been talking to computer nincompoops who don't know their hard drive from their microwave, who pompously declare that THEY have a Mac and therefore no hacker shall molest them due to the ingenious engineering skills of Lord Jobs. Several times mac users have literally looked down their noses at me when I say I'm running Windows/*nix/not-a-MacOS.

Isn't it time to admit that this is merely and ONLY class nonsense? Macs are/used-to-be more expensive. Therefore, fewer & more well-off people owned them. The well-off always think that they know everything (after all, they knew enough to be rich, right?) and that everything they want must Midas-wise be better that something they don't.

So macs haven't had a big virus-jacking yet. Sooner or later someone will be annoyed & talented enough to pull a real destructive one. And yes, then it'll be time for the poor, beleaguered Circuit City-bargain-bin-shopping Windows proletariat to have its day.

fertile ground for virus writers

[timmarhy]

fuck me, reading all these comments makes me think virus writers are rubbing their hands together right now.

listen up. antivirus is a good thing. repeat, a good thing. all these twats saying they have never been infected.... give me a break. you probably ARE infected and don't have a clue... BECAUSE YOU DONT RUN ANTIVIRUS.

Re:Nay!

[ugga24]

A lot better? Give me a break. I challenge you to put together a Dell for $650 (or $750 including monitor, since with a lot of their budget PCs you can't unbundle it) that matches the mini's specs. I challenge you. I could do this w/o breaking a sweat with a whitebox, why would i buy a crap dell or an overpriced mini? I always feel bad for apple al-qaida zealots who just don't know any better. apple is to computers what aol was to internet: training wheels. Whenever you get enough confidence to take the training wheels off let us know. Until then please reserve all of your apple sermons for macworld. Nobody else cares. Not even the scum of the earth, virus writers. ps: the next idiot i hear use the words apple, mac, or i-anything along with the word intuitive in the same sentence will be shot, no questions asked, for mindlessly regurgitating apple marketing hype/jargon as if it were scripture.