Slashdot Mirror
One In Five Macs Holds Malware — For Windows
judgecorp writes "One in five Apple Macs is infected with malware, according to Sophos. But most of that is harmless to the Mac... it is Windows malware ready to be transmitted to the Windows population. Only one in 36 Macs has OS X specific infections."
They may only be able to carry the germ without symptoms, but that still sounds like an infection to me.
The last sentence in the article makes their motives clear: “What Mac users really need to do is protect their computers now or risk allowing the malware problem on Macs to become as big as the problem on PCs in the future.”
Sophos simply wants to scare up some more business selling Mac business users their anti-virus software. (At least right now, home users can get it from them for free, at: http://www.sophos.com/en-us/products/free-tools/sophos-antivirus-for-mac-home-edition.aspx)
I'm in no position to challenge their numbers, but even "1 in 36 Macs" having a Mac specific infection seems awfully high to me. Maybe this last trojan horse that made the rounds pushed that number way up ... but I haven't encountered a single Mac that was infected yet, out of the ones my co-workers own (and always ask me for help with when they have problems), out of the ones we use at home, or out of the ones I support for clients in my side job. I don't think any of my Mac using friends on Facebook mentioned problems with it either.
Regardless? The concern of Macs harboring Windows malware is nothing new... That's been a potential issue for as long as I can remember. I recall the office running Norton anti-virus for the Mac on iMac G3 machines running MacOS 8.6 and 9.1, at one of my old jobs, just for that reason. They didn't want to accidentally spread an infected file they might have gotten via email to a Windows recipient.
The main reason Mac users stopped that practice, as I recall, was the really poor quality of most anti-virus packages when OS X came out. Apple even gave away copies of Virex for OS X to .Mac account holders at one time, and the software bogged down and destabilized the machines so badly, everyone I knew removed it in a matter of days!
No matter if your OS is Windows 5.x, 6.x, Mac OS X 10.x or GNU/Linux Kernel 2.4.x or 2.6.x. If your machine is a desktop run an antivirus.
You owe it to the rest of the world to exterminate viruses/trojans/malware, both the many (or few) that your machine is susceptible to, as well as those that, even though will not infect your machine, will be passed on to someone else... ...because YOU, saavy and enlightened slashdot user, did not catch and exterminated them.
Do it for the unwashed masses, that are clogging the pipes with port scans and attempts to infect, do it to have a tad fewer cheap viagra/penis enlargement offers in your spam folder... do it for the children!!!! :-)
If you "feel confident" (note the quotes) that your OS is "safe", that you use "safe practices", and the AV is a "Waste of resources", then fine, get an AV with a small footprint, both in system resorurces, and in $£¥€, and run it while you are sleeping, so it does not affect your daily work routine.
I am writing this fom Firefox 10.0.3 esr in a Mac with 10.6.8, and I am not scared at all about these developments, but, as safe practice, run ClamXav manually. I scan my machine and its external hard-drives every night, and scan smaller/unknown removable media every time it is inserted. ;-)
So, please my Linux and Mac OS X brothers and sisters, stop being a bunch of snobs, get on with the program, and run an antivirus. :-)
--
*** Suerte a todos y Feliz dia!
After going through the links to find a better source, I think I understand what happened.
The study comes from Sophos, with data collected from computers which downloaded their free anti-virus for Mac.
The most commonly found malware on the Macs was apparently fake antivirus scareware. My guess is that a lot of users saw the fake browser popup telling them a virus was found, and then clicked on it. This started a download which didn't run, but now they have a malware binary in their download directory that they can't use.
These are the people who downloaded free anti-virus from Sophos. No correlation.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Contaminated would be a better word, since the viruses have no way to spread or affect the computer.
I would have to say I'm infected, but not affected by it.
Either way, you're fected.
Required reading for internet skeptics