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Best Antivirus For Mac Osx

ppc750fx said:
Do you have a definition of virus, or are you just going to disclaim anything that I give as an example? ;)
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A computer virus is a computer program that can copy itself and infect a computer without permission or knowledge of the user. A worm or trojan horse requires the user to actively install it, which, on Mac OS X, includes entering the Admin password. These can be avoided by using some common sense and being careful what you install.

I repeat my original statement, which remains completely factual and accurate: There are no viruses in the wild that run on a Mac.
 
ggjstudios said:
A computer virus is a computer program that can copy itself and infect a computer without permission or knowledge of the user. A worm or trojan horse requires the user to actively install it, which, on Mac OS X, includes entering the Admin password. These can be avoided by using some common sense and being careful what you install.
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Your definition implies that a worm and a trojan are the same thing. They're not. Trojans aren't fully self propagating. They require user interaction, at a minimum to start execution (usually accomplished by masquerading as some other program, thus the name).

Worms, on the other hand, _are_ fully self-propagating. They can infect systems without any user interaction.

Viruses can be fully self-propagating, but don't need to be. From all that I've read, their only requirement is that they infect files/binaries in an attempt to ensure that they are spread.

By the above definitions, there exist viruses and trojans for Mac OS X. There are not, however, worms in the wild.
 
ppc750fx said:
Your definition implies that a worm and a trojan are the same thing.
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Nothing I said implied that a worm is the same thing as a trojan horse, but neither are viruses. You still haven't named even one virus in the wild that affects Macs. There are no worms or trojans in the wild that can infect Mac OS X without the user's intervention to install or activate, and there are, at this time, no viruses (computer industry definition) in the wild that affect Macs. You can argue all you want, but you can't change the facts.
For example, this is a quote from ClamXav.com, where ClamAV antivirus is offered:
ClamXav is a free virus checker for Mac OS X. It uses the tried, tested and very popular ClamAV open source antivirus engine as a back end.

Back in the days before OS X, the number of viruses which attacked Macintosh users totalled somewhere between about 60 and 80. Today, the number of viruses actively attacking OS X users is...NONE!
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I'm not wasting my time on this discussion anymore, since you apparently prefer to argue, rather than pass on factual, useful information. If you're naive enough to believe there are Mac viruses in the wild, that's your choice, but there are no facts to support your argument.

None of this is to imply that Macs are immune from the possibility of infection in the future and I'm not saying it's foolish or wrong to install AV software on a Mac. It's up to each user to decide what they want to do.
 
Sigh.

I provided several examples of viruses. By the definition you provided, yes, they aren't viruses. By the definition that a good portion of the industry uses, they are.

The fact remains: there is malicious software capable of infecting Mac OS X binaries in the wild. No, it's not a serious threat. Yes, it's incredibly unlikely that it will infect you. But saying "nuh-uh, it's not a virus according to my definition" doesn't change the fact that it exists. I'm not being naive -- and I'd argue that telling new users "don't worry, there aren't any viruses for OS X" is a hell of a lot more harmful than pointing out that there is infectious software (regardless of what you want to call it.)

But screw it. You want to win, so fine: There are no viruses for OS X. Everything's shiny.
 
ppc750fx said:
I provided several examples of viruses. By the definition you provided, yes, they aren't viruses. By the definition that a good portion of the industry uses, they are.
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I'm sorry that they're wrong. I'm sorry that OS X alerts the user before it installs anything. I'm sorry that OS X is inherently more secure than any other OS. You call her a virus, I call her Vera. Either way, you can't buy a Mac from Apple that is susceptible to any of the things you named. They've patched since then. They're not viruses, they're still threats, stop claiming that they are viruses when it is your definition that is wrong.
 
Tallest Skil said:
I'm sorry that OS X is inherently more secure than any other OS.
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Don't exaggerate.

It gains a _lot_ of security due to the Unix permissions model -- but claiming that it's "inherently more secure than any other OS" is almost comical. It's certainly one of the more secure desktop OSs out there, but I wouldn't make a sweeping statement like that...
 
ppc750fx said:
Don't exaggerate.

It gains a _lot_ of security due to the Unix permissions model -- but claiming that it's "inherently more secure than any other OS" is almost comical. It's certainly one of the more secure desktop OSs out there, but I wouldn't make a sweeping statement like that...
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Can you give me an example of why it isn't? You already gave me an example of why it is.
 
An uneducated user (what's a manual?) can mess any system up with software that's malicious/badly written/perfect/whatever - I arrogantly proclaim this discussion, pointless.
 
Tallest Skil said:
Can you give me an example of why it isn't? You already gave me an example of why it is.
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Most Unix based OSes are as secure as Mac OS X. OpenSolaris (true unix - fully conforms to the unix standard) is really nice and already implements ZFS but doesn't yet have the range of access to open source software as Gnu/Linux (also unix based).
 
Tallest Skil said:
Can you give me an example of why it isn't? You already gave me an example of why it is.
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I don't think you quite grasped my point. I didn't say that Mac OS X was insecure, just that a sweeping generalization such as "OS X is inherently more secure than any other OS" isn't grounded in fact.

That said, here are two examples of rather substantial holes in the default config, the first being the more serious of the two:

1) The keychain is, by default, unlocked. This means that any app can access the keychain for the user account under which it is running. It doesn't need admin privileges, nor does it need any form of user intervention. Yes, this can be changed, but by default it's horrendously insecure.

2) Safe sleep writes out the contents of memory to the disk. Unencrypted. That means that any passwords, encryption keys, etc. that were in memory are written to the disk, free for the taking.
 
VoR said:
An uneducated user (what's a manual?) can mess any system up with software that's malicious/badly written/perfect/whatever - I arrogantly proclaim this discussion, pointless.
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Indeed. By the same token, a well-educated, experienced user can harden most any system, Windows included. That's why it only makes sense to compare default configs.
 
munkery said:
Most Unix based OSes are as secure as Mac OS X. OpenSolaris (true unix - fully conforms to the unix standard) is really nice and already implements ZFS but doesn't yet have the range of access to open source software as Gnu/Linux (also unix based).
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Leopard fully conforms to the unix standard too.
 
Neil321 said:
Try downloading a maintenance app called OnyX see if that helps
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does ONYX do anything more than run the daily, weekly and monthly OS X maintenance scripts? If not, why would you run ONYX instead of using terminal? Had a bad experience with Onyx after an update a couple of OS X's back. Have been leery since.
 
I prefer MainMenu over Onyx. Never had a problem with MainMenu. It is not as powerful as onyx so those highly sensitive maintenance tasks still need to be done from the terminal. But, the more common maintenance tasks that are less likely to mess up your system are all in MainMenu and are very easy to use. MainMenu also can be set to do scheduled maintenance for the tasks it can do.
 
Need AV Recommendation

I prefer to use a Mac at work.

Our company will not support the 10-12 users who have Macs (out of about 1000), however, they now mandate we run AV if we connect to the network.

Now, I know they can't tell whether we comply or not because all their security apps only load on Windows machines that are domain members, however, in these tough economic times, no one wants to be too defiant.

Is there a reliable AV product we can use that will not hobble our efficient Mac islands in this sea of Windows plague carriers?

Cheers,
 
panzer06 said:
Now, I know they can't tell whether we comply or not because all their security apps only load on Windows machines that are domain members, however, in these tough economic times, no one wants to be too defiant.
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Honestly, I would. I would say "Look: there are no self-propagating viruses for OS X." If they're doing it to stop the transmission of Windows viruses, install ClamAV, set it to do something simple (like scan your ~/Downloads directory), and be done with it. For all I know, though, they could be doing it because they're not aware that there are no threats to protect against...
 
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