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Macs getting viruses
- Thread starter BrentonX
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To make money.
People who interface with a lot of Windows users may like to have anti virus running to prevent the spread of viruses from Windows computer to Windows computer via their Mac.
macs do not get viruses. period. There may, theoretically, be a mac virus 10 years from now, but I don't think so.
Norton is a waste of money and will slow your computer down more than the hypothetical viruses its "fighting"
Norton is a waste of money and will slow your computer down more than the hypothetical viruses its "fighting"
I'm sorry to tell you guys but there are viruses for mac. There are just very few and most of them don't work very well.
So, another unfounded Mac virus thread gets started. Read the subject line and 2 of 4 posts. Another inflammatory post is sure to come soon.
It is pointless to run an antivirus on a mac. There are viruses for them but it is a very small chance you will ever get one and if you do most of them are extremely inefective.
ummm... no.
i mean, i'll totally apologize if you show me a mac user with a virus. I have never, ever heard of one. not with mac osx at least.
There are no known OSX viruses (at the moment). Same for most flavours of unix.
There are Word macro viruses, but who in their right mind would use Word
There are Word macro viruses, but who in their right mind would use Word
Choose your words carefully. There are no viruses for Mac OS X but there are several exploits.
Nothing is currently available that will replicate and propagate itself to another machine without authorisation and if you're willing to authorise an exploit to take over your computer, enjoy.
Symantec sell Anti-Virus, etc. to make money. It should be able to remove Windows and MS Office viruses, but generally Norton brand products are crashware and cause more harm than they do good.
Nothing is currently available that will replicate and propagate itself to another machine without authorisation and if you're willing to authorise an exploit to take over your computer, enjoy.
Symantec sell Anti-Virus, etc. to make money. It should be able to remove Windows and MS Office viruses, but generally Norton brand products are crashware and cause more harm than they do good.
Well I did a very quick search and was only able to find about 5 different viruses for OS X. Here is a link explaining about one of them. And there are also about 30 viruses for classic macs. So as I said before there are very few so you don't need to worry about them.
People tend to use "virus" and "worm" interchangably. There has certainly been at least one worm out in 2006:
Symantec's Leap.A page
This one is fairly lame. However I'm guessing it's just a matter of time before something significant hits, since some Mac users tend to have a stupid attitude about security as well so they'll be easy pickings. Just check out the majority of the posts on this forum after that dork Johnny Cache pulled his wireless stunt (and remember, since that Apple has issued two Airport patches that in all likelihood were related to that exploit). And the SANS people have commented Apple seems to frequently need to relearn lessons the rest of the Unix world learned years ago.
Symantec's Leap.A page
This one is fairly lame. However I'm guessing it's just a matter of time before something significant hits, since some Mac users tend to have a stupid attitude about security as well so they'll be easy pickings. Just check out the majority of the posts on this forum after that dork Johnny Cache pulled his wireless stunt (and remember, since that Apple has issued two Airport patches that in all likelihood were related to that exploit). And the SANS people have commented Apple seems to frequently need to relearn lessons the rest of the Unix world learned years ago.
Viruses for Classic can't exactly infect OSX...
So i don't think those matter.
And i think the only "Viruses" for OSX have been either proof of concept, never released in the wild, or needed user intervention and couldn't propogate on their own, therefore they weren't viruses.
And with Word Macro Viruses. That happened to me once. Hooked it up in target disk mode to a school computer that had norton on it (a G5 powermac). Norton didn't even find it so i just removed it manually.
those things are really just annoying, just thought it was funny that the one virus you can get on OSX, or rather in Office:Mac isn't caught by a virus scanner for OSX.
So i don't think those matter.
And i think the only "Viruses" for OSX have been either proof of concept, never released in the wild, or needed user intervention and couldn't propogate on their own, therefore they weren't viruses.
And with Word Macro Viruses. That happened to me once. Hooked it up in target disk mode to a school computer that had norton on it (a G5 powermac). Norton didn't even find it so i just removed it manually.
those things are really just annoying, just thought it was funny that the one virus you can get on OSX, or rather in Office:Mac isn't caught by a virus scanner for OSX.
Ok that one may have been classified as a worm which has a very small difference from a virus but there are still viruses for mac os x. Here are a few more examples that are classified as viruses: http://www.symantec.com/security_response/writeup.jsp?docid=2004-102218-1803-99&tabid=1 http://www.symantec.com/security_response/writeup.jsp?docid=2000-122112-4547-99 http://www.symantec.com/security_response/writeup.jsp?docid=2000-121814-1327-99 http://www.symantec.com/security_response/writeup.jsp?docid=2006-050608-5241-99&tabid=1
They're classified as viruses by Symantec. They're trying to sell anti-virus software.
The first one is recent and runs on Mac OS X as a shell script. That hole had been plugged within a few weeks of the discovery.
The next two are not Mac OS X viruses, they are Mac OS-based and may not even run with the Classic environment enabled.
The final one is an MS Word virus, which isn't run by the operating system and only affects those running MS Office.