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Why You Shouldn't Panic Over Mac Malware
Earlier this week, we discussed reports that Mac malware was finally becoming a significant problem. Now, reader wiredmikey points out an editorial arguing that everyone should slow down and analyze the situation more calmly so the threat can be accurately assessed. Quoting:
"According to Apple, the Mac installed base is approximately 50 million users. But according to Gartner, the number of Android handsets sold in 2010 alone exceeded 67 million units, giving it an installed base that is larger, and growing much faster, than the Mac base. If a large numbers of eyeballs is indeed the lure that causes criminals to write malware for a given operating system, surely Android is a more tempting target than Mac OS. ... I predict that the increase in perceived risks to Mac customers will give Apple the excuse it needs to increase its control over the Mac software ecosystem, by moving ISVs to the Mac App Store. It is no accident that the theme of the upcoming Lion desktop operating system is 'Back to the Mac': taking concepts that Apple employed successfully with the mobile version of OS X (iOS) and back-porting them to the desktop OS. One of those features is the introduction of the Mac App Store, an Apple-controlled storefront for selling and distributing applications. ... This provides buyers some assurance that their apps are from known points of origin and that they don’t contain malware, such as the Mac Defender Trojan horse.
Safari browser exploits and other app exploits can still lead to installing malware on a machine.
Nice bit of Astroturf there.
So, we shouldn't worry about malware on the Mac because Oh LOOK here's some speculation about a completely different OS so don't pay attention to this story anymore!!!
And then the inevitable push from Apple to have total control over you system by the eventual restriction of apps to Apple market-approved programs only. Well that's sure a nice idea, too bad some of the Official apps like Safari also contain security weaknesses. So much for the safety of the walled garden approach. But it's not stopping them from trying, apparently.
No, I don't panic over Malware on my Mac. It has nothing to do with Android, or any other OS, or the App Market, or anything else this shit-for-an-article is talking about.
However, during my linux period i grew accustomed to finding great software doing almost everything i could wish for within a few clicks/google searches.
For OSX its the opposite. For every small task that i want to accomplish, i seem to need to pony up. Every small time programmer tries to make a buck with his little program. Nothing wrong with that, but where are the Free/Libre alternatives?
Not learnt anything during your Linux period? Ok, I'll help out. The answer to your question is: Are you writing them? No? See, that's why they're not there.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
I don't know whether your post is serious or a reference to some meme I am unfamiliar with, but anyway.
Everything is in a VM instance
If this is the (only) reason why it is "secure", and the official website seems to say so, you may want to go with OpenBSD anyway. To quote Theo de Raadt:
You are absolutely deluded, if not stupid, if you think that a
worldwide collection of software engineers who can't write operating
systems or applications without security holes, can then turn around
and suddenly write virtualization layers without security holes.
Rutkowska definitely has an impressive resume, but I don't think that even someone like her can make a system secure just by using virtualization. However, I will make sure to keep an eye on that project, it looks quite interesting even though it won't replace my current setup.
And, yes, they will certainly lock down OSX.
Ahh, the inevitably incorrect Apple prediction. The most valuable tech company in the world that was predicted dead in 1997...the company that killed the floppy drive prematurely...the company that adopted USB too early...the company with the lame mp3 player.
You may still be able to buy a Mac Pro with an unlocked OS, but I'm willing to bet that soon all iMacs and MacBooks will be 100% walled garden.
That is possibly the most stupid prediction I've seen. Why would the company who is getting ready to consolidate OSX Server and OSX Home into ONE edition --OSX Lion-- start making different versions of the OS based on the user's hardware?
Keep predicting slashdotters, because my livelihood benefits from your terrible predictions.
For OSX its the opposite. For every small task that i want to accomplish, i seem to need to pony up. Every small time programmer tries to make a buck with his little program. Nothing wrong with that, but where are the Free/Libre alternatives?
Well, OS X is still a vastly smaller community than Windows, and I suspect that although Linux (desktop) users outnumber OSX users a disproportionate number of Linux users are also programmers. So its not surprising there's less choice. That also means that the money to be made from true "honesty box" shareware is probably smaller, so developers are more likely to require payment. Also, historically, Mac OS "Classic" developer tools and documentation cost an arm and a leg - of course, since OS X they've been free (or very cheap, for iOS), but the early days may have set community expectation. Finally - I don't think OS X is the easiest platform to develop for (however elegant) and OS X users tend to demand nice GUIs on everything.
However - its not all bad: First, OS X is Unix: Install "fink" or "macports" and you'll get access to a huge number of Free/Libre packages from the Linux/Unix world - albeit most of these are command-line or X11. If you don't want to roll your own, lots of major "free" projects offer OSX versions: (off the top of my head and at random: LibreOffice, Eclipse, InkScape, VirtualBox, PostgreSQL, MySQL, Mozilla) not to mention the stuff that is already present in OS X (Apache, PHP, Ruby, Python, Samba, CUPS...) I hope the latter list doesn't diminish too much as projects move to GPLv3.
In a survey of 100 programmers, 111111 thought that duck-typing was a good idea.