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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.)
Say it isn't so. Everyone knows macs are just as cheap as PCs!
"but money is the God of Algiers & Mahomet their prophet." - Rich. O'Bryen June 8th 1786
It's called a Disk Image. If you have it mounted, then you can scan it with any anti-virus program. There's no reason not to use anti-virus on Macs. ClamAV is free and works quite well.
Short answer: Yes
Long answer:
If your Mac runs MS-Office software or other cross-platform software that has infectable data files, you are vulnerable to some Macro viruses.
If your Mac can run MS-Windows binaries you may be vulnerable to some Windows viruses.
If your Mac hosts files on a mixed network your Mac should protect itself from hosting infected files.
So, unless you've got an all-Mac/no-Windows network or your Mac doesn't run or host Windows files, AND you do not run any cross-platform files that have infectable data files, you should protect yourself and your network.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
I've been running ClamXav, http://www.clamxav.com/ , for a long time. I normally don't run full scans, but I do use the Sentry ability on any download directories. So anything I download is scanned. Nothing so far :)
15 years of no viruses, no malware, etc. The secret? No secret, just avoid being stupid. AV software is like driving a car with the intention of crashing it all the time, but wearing a seatbelt and thinking everything's OK.
The twitter monologues. Click on my homepage and be amazed.
There's no reason not to build a nuclear bomb shelter either, except that most people don't need it, it won't work and it's a waste of money. Now that I think about it, there are more reasons to build a shelter than there are to run AV on modern *nix derivatives. AV programs are a terrible performance drain on the one system that needs it but is never really protected by it.
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=216934&cid=17629948
Ha. I already don't run AV on the PC either.
Well tell me why I really need to? I mean I have it installed, but I certainly don't have that stupid active scanning thing turned on. So when I open a file, my computer really needs to open it twice? Bull.
I get my mail from gmail (so attachments already scanned there). I use FireFox (so little chance of infection there). I do scan things that might possibly contain a virus -- anything from a usenet newsgroup or from P2P (which is only a few executables ever anyway); And I do let it scan the whole thing once a week (and never finds anything I didn't already know about, of course).
And you know what? My old computer running Win2K runs faster than most any new computers out there with AV turned on. To date, I've never been bitten by any viruses.
"They said I probly shouldn't fly with just one eye," "I am Bender. Please insert girder."
IMHO Mac users who send out files to people should probably use a virus checker. It's just polite. The fact that something can't cause damage to your machine doesn't mean you shouldn't check it to make sure it won't hurt someone else's I'm kinda being hypocritical here, seeing as in my years running Macs and Linux boxes, I've rarely run virus checkers, but then again, I hardly forward email and almost never deal with attachments.
Just because it won't effect you doesn't mean it won't effect someone you know. Now here's where everyone will start saying, "it's teh windoze uzer's own fault! Dey shouldn't be so dumb!" but seriously people, if you want to show people that Unix is a better choice, show them by helping, not by hurting.
"Don't meddle in the affairs of a patent dragon, for thou art tasty and good with ketchup." ~ohcrapitssteve
I used to work at a computer lab that was all Macs at a school. For a short while we didn't run any AV software on the machines--until we started getting complaints from other departments that files that were coming from us had viruses. Turns out that Office for Mac is a perfect vector for all those pesky macro viruses that would find their way onto machines. It wasn't incredibly serious, but it was enough to get us to put AV software back on the Macs.
This guy's the limit!
Why should I spend my time, money, and CPU cycles on running AV on a system that has an essentially 0 rate of virus infection? I've got a firewall on my network, *and* I've got the host firewall running on my Mac. I read my email in GMail and almost never open documents in Office, except those that come thru my work mail (via Entourage), which is scanned at the corporate level anyway.
I back up my files, so I'm not at (too much) risk for data loss.
Maybe once there are *real* viruses out there for the Mac, I will reevaluate. Maybe I will be unlucky, be one of the first ones to be hit by a Mac virus in the wild and have to spend a few hours reinstalling all my apps and restoring from backups. But so far, if I ran AV, I'd just be investing real time and money into defending against an all-but-nonexistent threat. The cost/benefit just isn't there.
And how is the antivirus going to catch the problem when it first appears? When large scale OS-X viruses start appearing the existing AV software won't recognize them or know how to handle them. The software needs to have either a signature of known viruses or a heuristic that catches likely viruses. Without a large pool of OS X viruses it would be next to impossible for any AV software to protect against future threats. AV software is reactive security, not proactive. The only thing an AV program before then will do is protect against some older Mac OS virus and help avoid passing windows virus, that and decrease performance and increase energy usage. As the article says the best thing to do is be smart about how you use the computer and keep abreast of any changes. Because of their limited numbers any notable Mac viruses will get reported soon after they are found, at which point it may be worthwhile reconsidering the use of AV software. Just because there is not such thing as a secure computer doesn't mean that best way to balance the risks / cost ratio for all systems is the same.
This is just a teeny-weeny bit unreal. Close inspection reveals that the cited article refers to US-based PC retail sales.
There is more to the world than the US. And there's more to sales than retail sales. Apple has much lower sales penetration in Europe and Asia, and it has much lower sales in the commercial sector. Apple might be on enjoying a renaissance, but don't be fooled by inappropriate statistics.
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.
If a virus is sophisticated enough to spread without user interaction chances are it spreads faster than definition files (e.g. SQL Slammer).
I have run without anti-virus for about 15 years or so and I have only been infected with two viruses. One from the MS-DOS days by leaving a disk in a computer and another that wasn't strictly a virus but malware from mistyping a domain. Malware that anti-virus wouldn't have detected or prevented anyway.
It seems like there are only two cases both of which anti-virus is pretty much useless for sophisticated users: 1) The virus is old. In which case it would require manual intervention to install into your system since a patch has been released. or 2) The virus is new. In which case the definition files won't catch it anyway. (yeah, I know heuristics.. but come on they never really work beside throwing false positives).
One thing that worries me is I see a lot of Mac users who have the "Macs can't have bad things happen to them," attitude. This is dangerous in general, but particularly with Macs becoming more popular. In general it is just bad because it leads to lax security policies. For example we got a notice here that a computer was doing bad things. Tracked it down, it was a Mac. We disconnected it and found the owner. Their response? "But Macs can't be hacked!" Ya well turns out they can if you are dumb enough to have a world writable FTP server with the root directory of /, which is what this idiot had done. I don't even know that it was being used for anything other than a public warez FTP, but still, the point is MacOS couldn't defend against extreme stupidity.
So I think it is a good idea for Mac users to run AV scanners, and other security tools, just in case. Even if you've never found anything, better to have a good security policy than to end up being sad later on.
Think of it like having a house in a good neighbourhood: Just because your place has never been broken in to, doesn't mean you should leave the door unlocked. Sure it might not be common where you live, but that doesn't mean it is impossible. Practise good security and it isn't a problem.
I take the same view with computer security. I mean for that matter I've never had a virus on my Windows system, and I don't find it likely that I will. I don't do the sorts of things that are going to get you infected. However, I am going to be safe about it, rather than being sorry that I was arrogant in assuming my knowledge made me invincible.
The right question is "Should Apple take security more seriously?" YES and "Should Apple be more proactive in dealing with security issues?" YES. "Should Apple be closely following the tactics of various malware propagators and bot net operators?" YES.
Bringing the Anti-virus & Registry Cleaner snake oil salesmen to the Mac isn't going to do anyone any good.
Having said all that I used to use clam but never reinstalled it when I move to Leopard...
Nothing in the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.
I note that Leopard Server runs ClamAV by default, and does so without user intervention. Of course the mission for the server release is different from that of the desktop, and there may be an expectation that you'll be interacting with Windows at some point. It's capable of supporting Windows clients, and for that you should have an AV suite. It would be beyond foolish not to have one.
Still, many people interact with Windows from their client Macs too, but not everyone. Windows is not a part of my life, for instance.
Apple obviously felt it necessary to include an AV suite for the server release. They've tailored it for the OS, so why not ship it by default with the client release as well? Perhaps because they feel it isn't necessary, and they're choosing to err on the side of fewer wasted cycles for the majority of their users? I suspect that if a bona fide threat to OS X ever does appear ClamAV will be made available for the client release via Software Update the next day.
Yes/no. While you can run as a non-admin user on Windows, many apps won't work this way. At a minimum many require Power User access (I think that is the group). I set up my in-laws to use a non-Admin and they cannot access their Kodak camera unless they switch to Administrator (which they do and tell it to download, and then switch back to their regular user). They rarely install apps, but if they need to, again, they just switch to Administrator (showing them how to "Run As" is harder than just having them switch users). I can't recall the rest of the apps, but a number of customers cannot run as a non-local administrator.
Especially when you start talking upgrades they seem to be pricey. Looking at an iMac right now they want $500 to go from 1GB (the default and minimum) to 4GB. Hop over to Dell and going from 512MB (default and minimum) to 4GB is only $170. Now yes, I realise you can buy aftermarket parts, but that defeats part of the point of getting an OEM system and certainly an Apple: support. You get everything from the OEM, they are your one stop for support, particularly with Apple who also makes the OS. You start buying aftermarket, that is no longer the case.
Now that aside, the other problem I find is that while their prices are often comparable for a system at a given point, they don't actually offer what many want. The towers are a good example. Yes, actually, their towers are fairly competitive pricewise when you spec out a similar Dell workstation with dual quad cores, lots of registered ECC RAM capacity, and so on. However the problem is what if I don't want that? What if I want a single quad core (or dual core), non-ECC RAM, and so on? There's plenty of cases where this is a much better option.
Let's say I don't have software that scales up to 8 cores. This is fairly common these days. So let's say I'd like a quad core with 4GB of RAM. If I go the Apple tower route, $2800 is the price for that. That isn't unreasonable, since it is a single Xeon, with support for a second one, and registered, ECC RAM, which is really expensive. However, Gateway (or I suppose MPC now since they bought Gateway's business division) would be happy to sell me a E-6610Q with similar specs (HD, video, etc) for about half that ($1300).
Now the thing is, the sort of system I listed is quite useful. We buy a good number of them here (that's why I know about it) for research. There's a lot of cases where someone wants a system that has a good processor, plenty of RAM (we often get 8GB even, which is still cheap) but just really doesn't have use for a full on workstation class system. This is even more true now that processors have gone multi-core. While 8 cores is great, there are just a lot of things that are hard to write to make use of that many. So if you aren't using more than 4, the second processor, and all the associated cost, isn't useful.
That is the main reason I'd say Apple isn't competitive on price. A mid range tower is something that there is a whole lot of market for, but they just don't sell. If you don't want an all in one, your only option is super high end. If you don't have a need for the extra hardware, that is just money wasted.
Same goes for people at home. For example I like to play games. An all in one wouldn't work for me. Sure, I could get a similar monitor (24" widescreen), CPU (Core 2 Duo) and RAM (4GB) to what I have. However I can't get the graphics card I have, and I can't ever upgrade it. That is a show stopper right there, since the core of the system will last a good deal longer than the video card. It'd be a waste to buy a new system when only one component needs updating. Likewise the monitor will outlast the system, again a waste to upgrade.
That's my objection to the argument that Apple is a good value for equivalent hardware. That is true in a narrow sense sometimes, but given that they don't have a solution for a large number of people, it isn't true over all.
A lot of companies run antivirus software even on their high end Solaris and AIX machines. Not because there is a likelihood of a RTM worm repeating itself, but because of legal reasons. A lot of corporate clients require their vendors to "have antivirus protection on all computers", a very wide and sweeping statement.
One reason I can see putting AV on a Mac is so people (and companies) can check this box, saying that all their machines that handle customer data have antivirus protection installed, even if the utility is just triggered from a cronjob that does a scan down the filesystem for infected Windows files every so often.
Historically, before OS X, Macs did have some viruses, although relatively few of them were malicious. Before Word macro viruses became common, John Norstead's Disinfectant was one of the more used anti-virus utilities that offered not just scanning, but in memory protection.
PS. If you mean "Windows" then say "Windows" rather than "PCs". I'm not getting into a "my brother is bigger than your brother" argument but my Linux PCs are probably far more secure than your Mac. That's because security is my job, I've a decade of Linux experience with an additional 15 years of UNIX experience and I am forever fiddling about with the bloody things to make them as secure as possible. If you do the same with your Mac(s) then good on you.
PPS. And before I get called a zealot, I also run a number of XP PCs with AVG Antivirus on them that also never get viruses because I watch where I surf, never install pirated software and never open an email attachment that I'm not 100% confident about.
Gentoo Linux - another day, another USE flag.
You aren't protected from zero day expliots by anti-virus either. The new virus won't have a definition. Even some existing viruses can get past anti-virus using encryption. I saw a computer not long ago infected with a nasty Zlob variant with new definitions. I then tried to use several different vendors to remove it. Guess what, not symantec, mcafee, or nod32 could get rid of it. It took me using hijackthis along with mounting the file system from a linux live CD to get rid of the bugger.
Yes there is a risk of getting a virus on the internet. However, in my opinion, it only helps people who are prone to clicking omgponies.exe.
Current AVs rely on databases of known definitions. With few definitions for OS X, and no current malware in the wild, there is no point to a database. Heuristics are shit, and easy to fool currently, also subject to false positives(a customer brought in a computer once where Norton was going off on DaggerFall's setup.ini, for example, but riddled with shit like sdbot that should have been caught), making the point moot. Great way to slow down your system and throw away some money, though!
www.isoHunt.com
Secondly they'd need to not realise that their
Thirdly they'd then need to enter in a username and their password(if they are even the account holder who knows it/remembers it) to give the software permission to alter critical files on their system - all while not seemingly realising that their file isn't opening in Word/text editor.
This kind of virus is akin to dragging all your files to the trash, emptying it and claiming it was a virus.
Now take the case of windows. "www.porn.com" is a perfectly accepted file name for an executable. It too can have a little icon of something pornographic. Meanwhile, all a Windows person need do is double click it and it's game over. (Or if you're a Vista user, you'd need to choose accept from a dialog window - which the OS has already trained you to click blindly.)
If you're comparing Vista to Mac OS 10.5, then the moment you received this ".doc" file, whether from an email attachment, chat or website, the OS will alert you when you're opening it to where the file has come from, what time you received it, from what program and even what user sent it to you - and most importantly what kind of file it -really- is. This particular attack vector has been addressed extensively. It will as a minimum stall or prevent the creation of a botnet using Mac OS computers.
That it isn't that I don't like it. There are two big problems:
1) There is a major segment of the market that Macs don't cover. Basically anyone who doesn't want an all-in-one, but doesn't want or can't afford a high end workstation. They have no offerings for that market. If I was the weirdo for wanting that, I'd be ok with it, but that is the major market out there. There's a whole lot of reason to want a computer like that. For example in our instructional labs, we can't afford high end workstations, not when we are getting 50 computers, nor do we have a need for that power. However an all-in-one is a bad idea. Why? Because monitors last a lot longer than computers. One of our labs has undergone two upgrades to the computers but is still using the same monitors. Eventually they'll have to be replaced, but LCDs last a good long time.
This is a real good thing, because generally it is a situation like "You have $50,000 to spend on the lab." Ok, that's $1000 per computer. Well, $150 not spent on a monitor is $150 that can be spent on a faster processor or more memory and so on. No reason to replace a perfectly good monitor just because the computer is out of date. It is a non-trivial part of the budget that would have to be spent on even a fairly small monitor.
2) All the arguments that macs are "good value for the money." No, they aren't for most people. Most people don't want a workstation, if they did, that'd be the big sales from most companies. However there is very little software that can even make use of all that, let alone people who use it. It isn't a good value to most people so the argument is bogus. It is like trying to argue that an BMW R8 is a "good value" for a normal car. No, it's not. It may be a good value for a performance luxury car, however most people aren't after that. While it may well justify it's $100,000+ price tag, that doesn't change the fact that it is $100,000 and more car than most people need or can afford.
That has always been one of Apple's value problems is this bundling of things people don't need. It isn't that nobody needs them, just that most peopel don't need them. However it raises cost a lot and thus makes it not a good deal for the majority of people. I wouldn't call a Precision Workstation a good deal over all either. If you need those features, ok you get a good price for them, but it still is high priced. You pay a big premium for things like 2 processors and more than 8GB of RAM. It isn't a case where 8GB = $X and 16GB = $2*X. It is more like 16GB = $5*X or $8*X. You aren't doubling the cost to get these things, you are more than doubling it. What's more, they don't double performance. 8 cores are not twice as fast as 4 other than very special cases. As I said, there's precious little that can use all that, and even some of the apps that can (like say a good DAW) don't really have a use for it in most situations. Likewise getting more RAM doesn't help performance unless you actually have apps that need it. Just having more sitting there doesn't help.
There are plenty of cases with PCs where I give the advice of "Don't go above this unless you really need it because it incurs a big premium." The problem with Macs is, you just don't have that option. You want a tower? You get a bunch of expensive hardware, need it or not. Thus it really isn't a good value for most people.
By any reasonable definition, no, they don't. There have been a couple of extremely limited proof-of-concept viruses in the past few decades, which have infected approximately no one.
But it's not cheap. The cost is, in fact, huge.
Antivirus software is incredibly invasive, mucking about to do secret things in kernelspace, inserting itself into nearly every action performed by a machine. It takes substantial resources to accomplish this dubious goal, and alters the system in unpredictable ways.
The "more security is always better" rationale that you propose is too simplistic. Security measures must always be evaluated by comparing their benefits against their costs. Your estimation wildly exaggerates the (nonexistent) benefits of antivirus software while completely glossing over its substantial costs.
Antivirus software is categorically a foolhardy and dangerous thing to ever run on one's machine at all. The only strange edge case in which it represents an improvement is if one is using software like Windows, which is so wildly hole-ridden that security is expected to come from third parties. But even there, the correct solution is not to add more layers to shore up a quicksand foundation, but to simply replace it with a sane operating system.