Slashdot Mirror
Apple Quietly Recommends Antivirus Software For Macs
Barence writes "After years of boasting about the Mac's near invincibility, Apple is now advising its customers to install security software on their computers. Apple — which has continually played on Windows' vulnerability to viruses in its advertising campaigns — issued the advice in a low-key message on its support forums. 'Apple encourages the widespread use of multiple antivirus utilities so that virus programmers have more than one application to circumvent, thus making the whole virus writing process more difficult.' It goes on to recommend a handful of products." Reader wild_berry points out the BBC's story on the unexpected recommendation.
This story is just wrong. That document is several years old. Apple advises to install security software since years. They just added new names for recommended software products and therefore updated the issue date on the document.
Having multiple products deployed mean that the virus programmers have different applications to circumvent. But that's multiple products on different machines-- you wouldn't expect one user to run all of the anti virus products on one machine.
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
Hell they even gave it away with old .mac accounts. And apple support always had lines saying to use protection. How is it all of a sudden new? They have been saying to use protection for YEARS now.
"Slashdot, where telling the truth is overrated but lying is insightful."
Macs definitely are susceptible to malware, as the recent DNS trojan has demonstrated. Any app that asks for and gets your admin password is going to play with your computer, that's pretty hard to beat.
Viruses, and worms in particular, do covert, automated spreading. Worms are able to exploit on-by-default network services remotely in the background. (we just had a new one announced yesterday! affects xp AND vista, good lord you'd think they'd learn by now!) Viruses require the ability to circumvent LOCAL security, and get their hooks in the system and replicate locally without user interaction/permission. OS X (and unix in general) are designed from the ground up with this in mind, and have always been far less vulnerable to these two issues.
I don't see this changing anytime soon, just due to the differing design philosophies inside the two systems. From the start of OS X, apps didn't just have free access to do as they pleased, they were restricted by a security model, and learned to develop in OS X under these restrictions, being forced to learn good coding practice. Windows started in the wide open, and their devs got used to it, before they realize the scope of their mistake and tried to close the doors. The devs refused to stop writing apps that just "oh lets just assume we have full write access to the entire hard drive" etc. and so MS has had to go very slowly to avoid completely destroying their established software market. That's hard to overcome.
Even today I can count on one hand all the mac apps I've ran into that either (1) have to be installed while logged in as an admin, or (2) will only run properly (or completely) when logged in as an admin. And I count those developers as idiots for not knowing what they're doing and just assuming they have privs. Until Windows software approaches these numbers, I don't think we can call the Windows security model "fixed".
There are two things that most interest me here. First, Norton has been considered anything from "bad" to "poison" to OS X from the get-go. It's been known to create a wide variety of system problems, and in most cases, when OS X is misbehaving, and they admit they are running norton, the first advice they get is to remove it. (and "good luck removing it" to boot) Symantec has been of little help there, their first "removal tool" was 300+ lines of terminal commands, and still didn't completely uproot it. Their current removal tools are more effective and user-friendly though. So to see Apple RECOMMEND norton is something of a shock. I don't know of a single person in any of the mac support forums that recommends anything for Norton besides uninstalling it.
Second, I thought AV products don't "stack" well? Our PC tech here is constantly having problems with computers that come in and are running 2-4 AV software, and they're fighting like cats and dogs and crippling the system to where only a fresh install will fix it. From what I read on that Apple post, it sounds like Apple is encouraging you to install multiple AV software. And OS X already runs ClamAV doesn't it? Although I have yet to see such a thing get pushed out, I assume Clam can get updates via SoftwareUpdate? I seriously question where they're going by recommending you install additional (or possibly multiple) AV software.
I work for the Department of Redundancy Department.
I don't see this changing anytime soon, just due to the differing design philosophies inside the two systems. From the start of OS X, apps didn't just have free access to do as they pleased, they were restricted by a security model, and learned to develop in OS X under these restrictions, being forced to learn good coding practice.
There is another common stupidity that many Mac developers seem to have that still persists from the Classic days. Many OS X devs still act as though the user installing the app is the only one on the system. A good example is Adobe Reader. EVERY user that runs Reader for the first time will be pestered to enter an administrator password the first time the software is run. The only workaround is to copy some preference files into every home directory on the system and if there is an update to Reader then that has to be done again. Yeah, yeah, I know just use Preview but things like that happening are common. It isn't OS X' fault. There is provision for system wide app settings; it's just that OS X devs tend not to use them the way Windows devs assume everyone is an administrator.