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Do Viruses Exist On Mac?

clevin said:
I say YES.

The floating around Trojan is spreading right now.

I would say its a malware, not virus, two days ago,

But since apple just came up with new ads in which it makes fun of a windows worm called conficker, and call it a "virus". I think its proper to follow apple's own standard and call malware as "virus"
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It's an ads. Ie: A commercial made to touch the maximum of people possible to SELL things.

When people who don't know much about computer speak about Virus, what they really mean is a malware, which include a bunch of things (virus, trojan, worms, adware, spyware, etc.)

The ads clearly say Virus because that's what the average guy know. Saying malware would be less effective.

To go back to the topic, there were virus (the famous iChat virus), which aren't active anymore. RIGHT NOW there are trojans (iWorkServices, and look like there are others). which are spread in the wild. They DON'T reproduce themselves and require action from the user to effectively infect the machine (giving your admin password). Therefor, they AREN'T Virus.

So in short: Right now there are no active virus. But there are malwares, easily avoided by not downloading anything illegally.
 
clevin said:
I say YES.

The floating around Trojan is spreading right now.
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It is not, unless people are still stupid enough to go to a torrent and download it.

clevin said:
I would say its a malware, not virus, two days ago,

But since apple just came up with new ads in which it makes fun of a windows worm called conficker, and call it a "virus". I think its proper to follow apple's own standard and call malware as "virus"
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You should be old enough to know the difference between a trojan and a virus. I must therefore assume that you don't post because you don't know better, but in an attempt at trolling and confusing people.

BrettFarve04 said:
Check Cnn.com Homepage :( :(
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They are clueless. Just read their article carefully, and you'll see how clueless they are.
 
Unless you are an idiot, you have zero chance of picking up any kind of malware on your Mac. The only malware that has surfaced so far is on porn websites and torrents of hooky software, that require you to hand over the admin password. Only install software from trusted websites, always keep up to date with your 10.x.x updates, and you will be virus free.

Watch a video from the ever wise mrbit, to learn why marketshare has absolutely nothing to do with amount of viruses or exploits http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iSQ8RHmFHpw
 
It sounds like the OP is seeing an ad banner as one previous poster stated with the "Is it scanning C:\WINNT" comment.


OP I wouldn't worry about viruses on Mac OS. What you saw was most likely a fake pop up banner. You will NEVER magically get a box that says "You have 3948092384 viruses" and Windows or Mac OS will never tell you you have a virus either.

Also as a side note, your computer doesn't have to do anything weird to be infected. A ton of computers have viruses and youd never know.
 
gnasher729 said:
It is not, unless people are still stupid enough to go to a torrent and download it.

You should be old enough to know the difference between a trojan and a virus. I must therefore assume that you don't post because you don't know better, but in an attempt at trolling and confusing people.

They are clueless. Just read their article carefully, and you'll see how clueless they are.
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unless you are saying apple is trolling people and confusing people, I can't buy your argument.

Why exactly can apple call malware viruses but others can't? Is apple old enough? are apple defenders old enough to understand the pitful of double standard?

If we want to talk about OS security, We should use same standard. if apple think malwares are viruses, then we go from there. Until I see most people at MR denounce the term used in apple's ads and PR memo, I will have no choice but to call it out whenever it happens.
 
clevin said:
Until I see most people at MR denounce the term used in apple's ads and PR memo, I will have no choice but to call it out whenever it happens.
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Okay. I hereby denounce Apple's discombobulating use of the term virus when they should be saying malware. Can we move on now? :D
 
dejo said:
Okay. I hereby denounce Apple's discombobulating use of the term virus when they should be saying malware. Can we move on now? :D
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i count 1 now! thanks

seriously, this is real issue, not a game, terminology is important to certain degree. We DO need to discuss on same ground. In face of security problem, game is simply not a solution.

What I worry about, is that we all know no matter how you view the strong-ness of OSX, you know it will get infected with malware (A.K.A. viruses as apple called) or viruses (As techi called). And looking around, how many people know what they should do when that happen? and how many people know how to check if they got infected? and how many people has any habit of checking for viruses, malwares at most once a year?

THAT, is the problem, and since viruses, malwares are not just operating on their own host machines, I am not feeling ok with thousands of OSX zombie machines out there on internet and their owners are still blinded and know nothing!

yeah, fingering pointing is good distraction like some people did, but then, after finger pointing, what do we left behind? Still, thousands of OSX zombie machines out there on internet and their owners are still blinded and know nothing!

We need to demand some sort of awareness education from influential organizations in mac community (such as Apple Inc. if they care a bit), we need free solutions from apple, or apple recommended 3rd party.
 
clevin said:
We need to demand some sort of awareness education from influential organizations in mac community (such as Apple Inc. if they care a bit), we need free solutions from apple, or apple recommended 3rd party.
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Sorry, but you only need to look at the Windows ecosystem to know that neither of those two things will do a damn bit of good.

There's plenty of public awareness about Windows malware problems. There are tons of vendors that offer security products for Windows. Microsoft has spent inordinate amounts of money attempting to help users secure their machines.

The result? There are still zombied machines. There are still botnets. Users who wish to intentionally remain ignorant do so, and millions of machines are infected because most people flat-out just don't care.

You can have all the public service announcements and free babysitting software you want, but if someone just doesn't care if their machine gets infected, there's little that can be done.
 
ppc750fx said:
Sorry, but you only need to look at the Windows ecosystem to know that neither of those two things will do a damn bit of good.
.
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better than staying there waiting for the disaster. no to mention windows ecosystem does have multiple free AV protection and vast majority of windows users are aware of the situation and have av installed for protection.

Now leopard Snow Leopard is seeding, Im sure there are many people out there will hunt it on bt again, whats gonna happen? I dont know.

But I do know that I felt unsatisfied with the situation.
 
Here's some free Antivirus software for the Mac:

http://www.clamxav.com/

It looks mostly for Windows viruses and even checks in mailboxes. I actually found a trojan on some old archive from my Windows days. You can let it monitor your download folder if you want.

Antivirus for the Mac makes sense if it interacts with Windows PCs in a Network. As A Mac user, you can be rather careless on the internet and download viruses. If you share files with the Windows PCs in some way, the virus could get onto one of the Windows PCs and do what viruses do. Your Windows PCs should already have virus protection, but 2 layers of protection are better than one (this rule does not apply to condoms however).

I'd let ClamXav run on the Mac overnight just for the peace of mind.
Are there any actual viruses out there any more? I mean, a virus is just doing damage locally (corrupting files, annoying the user) and does not help anyone. Tojans help build botnets to send spam, run coordinated denial of service attacks or just allow full access to the user's data. They should call trojan or malware scanners.
 
Nope, no OS X viruses out there. ClamXAV only detects Windows threats.

It does have OSX.RSPlug.A listed, but it's over 2 years old, and I'm pretty sure it's no longer distributed.
 
There are no true viruses for Mac. The "fake" ones require you to enter your administrator info and do not do much damage. It won't steal your personal info or that like.
 
I can't really believe the "mac's are too small a target theory" I mean computers are like 8% macs? Should macs have 8% of viruses?

Not to mention wouldn't there be a ton of virus writing, mac hating, no-good-nicks out there?
 
@snowleopard: They're called trojans :)

@mikeinternet: Yeah, that's perfectly true.

If OS X had 90% of the market share, there would be more people trying to attack it, but it would be nowhere near as bad as Windows. OS X is more secure than Windows, UNIX is extremely difficult to write a virus for.
 
If your going to run any virus software use intego It scans both Mac and Windows.

The only way your going to get a Trojan is by downloading and installing pirated software.....at this point. If you know and trust where your software comes from you should be fine.

Mac virus? They don't exist in the same way Windows virus do. You need to allow the virus entry by providing your admin password.
 
Jethryn Freyman said:
@snowleopard: They're called trojans :)

@mikeinternet: Yeah, that's perfectly true.

If OS X had 90% of the market share, there would be more people trying to attack it, but it would be nowhere near as bad as Windows. OS X is more secure than Windows, UNIX is extremely difficult to write a virus for.
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The Unix theory is a bunch of Bologna. There are far fewers hoops to jump through now that the NT kernel has been revised so many times and has a quite robust security. This might have been true in the 90's, but its not true anymore. The whole entering the password thing is also true on Vista and 7. The whole sense of security comes from the small marketshare, not better design.
 
you people are still doing double standard, apple call malwares "viruses".

so according to apple's own definition, OSX has Viruses, the recent trojan horse is just one example.

and more importantly. There are thousands of zombies Macs out there right now. and most of owners of those zombie machines are just so confidant like you guys that they don't even know or do anything about them zombie machines.

OSX is intrinsically safer than windows? I dont know, maybe you are right, but so what? intrinsically safer is not 100% safe, and without proper protection, the damage would be much greater than a protected intrinsically less safer windows machine.

macs have less than 4% marketshare globally, and you know many hackers are from RUS. Not to mention, when your marketshare is below certain level, there would be no linearity of marketshare and percentage of hackers who care to hack it.

Lets quit making excuses, and pushing for a plan to protect users.
 
clevin said:
you people are still doing double standard, apple call malwares "viruses".

so according to apple's own definition, OSX has Viruses, the recent trojan horse is just one example.
Click to expand...

No, a trojan is not a virus. Torjans and Viruses are malware, but that is a different story. I'll worry when you can pick up malware off of a malicious website with no intervention.

OSX is intrinsically safer than windows? I dont know, maybe you are right, but so what? intrinsically safer is not 100% safe, and without proper protection, the damage would be much greater than a protected intrinsically less safer windows machine.
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Well you are correct, you don't know know what you are talking about. The fact of the matter is any non-trivial OS is not 100% safe. Any OS where users can install software can be compromised by a Trojan. When speaking about real life performance OSX is safe.

Lets quit making excuses, and pushing for a plan to protect users.
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You mean like.

  1. Code signing
  2. Mandatory Access Controls in the OS ( sandboxing, like in the iPhone is part of Leopard and can be used to isolate any process ).
  3. ACL's
  4. Code hardening
  5. Code address randomization
  6. Encrypted home directories
  7. An encrypted security storage mechanism for passwords
  8. Industry standard firewall
  9. Use of pre-hardened unix services rather than creating them from scratch
  10. Dirt simple ways of cleaning the OS by a simple reinstall
  11. ... and much more

The fact of the matter is that Apple is working on staying ahead of the problem and has for years, which is why we have but 1 active malware out there for OSX.
 
What about this?

I'm new to Macs and had heard that they did not suffer from viruses and other malware, which gave me a good deal of comfort. However the recent reports of trojans makes me a bit tense. I know people say they are only in warez or whatever but what about tomorrow? Software is software isn't it? File servers get exploited, seemingly innocent things get infected. Or are Mac users not supposed to use shareware anymore?

Anyway this is what concerned me enough to post, I don't know enough about Macs to know if this is a genuine threat or not. They say this can get root access with no password prompt.

http://www.h-online.com/security/Root-exploit-for-Mac-OS-X--/news/113075

Please ease my fears guys :)
-Mus
 
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