If Windows is famous for anything - it's virus's and other malware - lots of it!
Strangely, even though Apple's OS X is famous for having very few malware, the very first computer virus that ever appeared in the wild was Rother J, written for the Apple II by Richard Skrenta in 1981.
According to Microsoft and others, however, they would have you believe that the Mac is just as susceptible and as vulnerable to malware as is the PC, but is that true? Just how many pieces of malware is actually out there for OS X anyway?
Well, for one, experts like Kaspersky Lab's just happens to maintain a full and detailed list. In their Virus Watch, they actually maintain a very, very, very long list of all of the known OS X's malware threats to date. This covers, and now get this..... two whole whopping pages of them! And, oh, by the way, the second page happens to list just one measly malware threat, the IM-Worm.OSX.Leap.a. This brings the total count, for both pages, of all of the known OS X malware threats to a whopping 31, assuming that I counted them correctly.
Here's a partial listing of Kaspersky OS X malware threats:
| Name of malicious program | ↑ Detection time | Update released |
| 8 July 2009 | ||
| Trojan-Downloader.OSX.Jahlav.k | 13:35 | 07:53 |
| 29 June 2009 | ||
| Trojan-Downloader.OSX.Jahlav.j | 09:01 | 07:51 |
| 17 June 2009 | ||
| Trojan-Downloader.OSX.Jahlav.i | 03:06 |
|
| 16 June 2009 | ||
| Trojan-Downloader.OSX.Jahlav.h | 02:04 | 14:18 |
| 14 May 2009 | ||
| Trojan-Downloader.OSX.Jahlav.g | 05:57 | 17:07 |
| 13 May 2009 | ||
| Email-Worm.OSX.Tored.a | 07:18 | 11:16 |
| 5 May 2009 | ||
| Virus.OSX.KL-Demo | 04:37 | 09:03 |
| 1 April 2009 | ||
| Trojan-Downloader.OSX.Jahlav.e | 06:42 | 15:35 |
| 19 March 2009 | ||
| not-a-virus:FraudTool.OSX.iMunizator.d | 04:09 | 08:42 |
| 11 February 2009 | ||
| not-a-virus:FraudTool.OSX.iMunizator.c | 02:38 | 06:08 |
| 29 January 2009 | ||
| Trojan-Downloader.OSX.Jahlav.d | 02:36 | 14:25 |
| 27 January 2009 | ||
| Backdoor.OSX.iWorm.c | 06:15 |
|
| Backdoor.OSX.iWorm.b | 03:27 |
|
| 26 January 2009 | ||
| not-a-virus:FraudTool.OSX.iMunizator.b | 07:48 |
|
| not-a-virus:FraudTool.OSX.iMunizator.a | 06:50 |
|
| 23 January 2009 | ||
| Backdoor.OSX.iWorm.a | 07:29 |
|
| | ||
You can access Kaspersky's full list here.
Remember: this is the combined total of all known OS X threats, including worms, trojans and virus's to date! Now lets contrast these with the well over 100,000 plus Window virus's, and the additional 400 new ones that come out each and every day, and tell me if you believe, if you ever did, Microsoft and all of the others who boldly claim that OS X is just as insecure as Windows, if not even more so?
And what's really important to remember here, about the these threats, is that most of them were not really that much of a threat to begin with in the first place! Most of these threats are quite harmless and couldn't have cause that much damage even if you had gotten one! Yes, let's not kid ourselves, of course, because there certainly were a few nasty stuff among the list that were potentially very dangerous, but still, none of them ever spread in the wild either, or caused any reported real damage to as much as even a single Mac computer, at least none have been reported thus far, or that I know of?
The biggest threat to Mac users is by people falling for social engineering tricks, whereby someone volunteers to give out their personal banking information, etc. Sadly, a few people will fall for such nefarious schemes, and that includes, I'm sure, a few Mac users among them. But that's not an OS security issue, but rather it's a social one and hence the name, social engineering. In this regard, all computer users, including Window users, as well as Mac and Linux users have a duty to be always on their guard, since no OS can protect it's users from plain ignorance, and lets be honest - just plain stupidity!
So, in conclusion, its obvious that even though Mac users can't remain indifference to the treat of malware, neither do they have to overly fear security issues in the same way that Windows users have had to, and still do, because OS X, despite what some would have you believe, is simply a lot better and a lot more secure of an OS than Windows.
And that's my 2 cents 4 this Tuesday, September 01, 2009
4 comments:
To Me
Mac OS was not very secure, just that it was previously not as high profile as windows, hence hackers tend to leave it alone.
However, with the public acceptance of Mac and iphone, hackers seem to divert their attention to the apple market.
The mac ox was hacked in less than 10s at a global hacking event which you can read more here
Hacking event 1
hacking event 2
I found the above while reading an article on a computer website which was comparing internet browsers
The best internet browser
My 1 cents worth
Nick
Thanks for your input nickleelifestyle, but your wrong about the Mac being hacked in 10 seconds!
Charlie Miller didn't hack the Mac in 10 seconds flat , as they want you to believe- that's next to impossible - a person can barely write their own name in that space of time, let alone research and exploit a modern OS, be it Windows, Linus or OS X.
What Charlie Millers simply executed was a flaw that he took months to find, and a flaw that he admitted he discovered well over a year previously!
Also, please note that one of the major sponsors of this contest was and still is MICROSOFT!
The first contest featured only the Mac and guess what? They failed to crack the system! This time they came prepared well in advance, and to make it look more legit, they added Windows and Linux this time. When someone like Charlie Miller admits that his whole life runs around trying to attack the Mac and make it look bad.... well, I'm not buying it! That shows a complete bias that should not even be allowed if the contest was really fair and legit, don't you agree?
No one in Apple, at anytime ever said that the Mac was impossible to crack, but that it was harder than Windows to do so in comparison, which it is!
With over 80,000,000 OS X users (desktop, iPhone and Touch) I think that hackers would have done a far better job by now, don't you?
After all, no hacker in his right mind would ignore California just because it's population is only 10% of the country..... it's simply too big to ignore; likewise, since Mac users are better educated and earn more money on average, I, if I were a hacker, would spend a great deal of time trying to crack the Mac. This nutty idea that the Mac is just too small to attack is just that.... NUTTY!
I've read those reports long, long ago and as a thinking person, I simply see through them for what they are..... a waste of time!
My apologizes, i not a very mac person. The only mac i am familiar with is probbaly Macdonalds. =D
Well, i did try using a mac (friend's) for a few hours and certainly i could feel the difference in terms in speed.
the trend is slowly shifting towards mac, and who knows, i might get one after my current pc expires (=
cheers
Thanks again Nick, no apologies needed. The Mac is a great platform, but it's not the only one, just the one I and millions of others prefer. Millions of others prefer otherwise, but that's fine.
If you ever decide to get a Mac, then congratulations. If not, Windows 7 and Linux are great platforms too. What ever works best for you then go for it!
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