Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
No Virus Software
- Thread starter Battlestar
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
Krevnik
macrumors 601
These days, that's about the long and the short of it. E-mail viruses rely on Windows to auto-execute attachments (they were usually VBScript or something basic that Outlook loved to execute automatically). You cannot get e-mail viruses easily anymore as all current versions of e-mail programs have stopped auto-executing code, but there is always the chance that it could be passed on to someone who is still vulnerable.
Word macro viruses are another example of this type of virus. Not very sophisticated, and rely on some stupid design by Microsoft to auto-execute untrusted code in documents as if nothing could possibly go wrong.
In the case of the iPhone OS, the apps are sandboxed for the most part. If an app does become infected, that infection cannot get outside the sandbox to infect other applications. If you sell an "anti-virus" app for the iPhone, it will also be sandboxed and cannot actually scan anything other than itself. Not very effective.
There are obviously exceptions here. Jailbreaking can be performed with physical access to the device (which pretty much means you are screwed anyways), and Apple apps still seem to be outside of sandboxes which is not a very good move, IMO.
Antivirus could be used on a jailbroken device, but it would sit there burning battery life scanning for all of one virus that can be mitigated simply by changing the root password after jailbreaking, and only affects jailbroken devices.
Put simply... anti-virus cannot function unless Apple writes it into the firmware on official devices, and jailbroken devices have a whole whopping one worm that can be defeated by practicing proper security. There isn't anything for AV software to do right now other than drain your battery.
In 15+ years of using Windows the only virus I ever got was Norton AntiVirus. It was the one thing that brought my machine to its knees, was insidious with all the invasive and detrimental software it installed in hidden places, and required special time-consuming research to remove all traces and restore my machine to normal operation. Seriously!
The only reason I use any anti-virus on Windows is that it's required by a contracting client. But it has never once detected a virus anywhere on my machine, not ever. I don't use anything on Mac, of course.
Symantec's website is a nightmare to navigate, but the Wikipedia entry does state that it scans for both Mac and Windows viruses.
In this case it would be considered a Trojan not a Virus. Technicalities aside what you are getting at is, in essence, truth. By jailbreaking, often seen as "freeing" yourself from Apple's "evil" ecosystem, you are in fact freeing up two things: Your freedom to install and use any application capable of running on the os and with the APIs provided; and also freeing yourself up to be attacked, abused, manipulated, etc as unfortunately, people can be a**holes when given the freedom to be.
Darth.Titan
macrumors 68030
Look at the date on that article. That's what I did and decide that the article is definitely not worth a read. It might have been interesting four years ago, but...
Nihilvor
macrumors regular
Actually, it's easy to keep Norton from hogging resources. Just disable live updates and any background protection. I got Norton for free from my school, and it's nice to have it there for some unforeseen day when you might need it.
Mostly, concerning the above, Norton finds Windows viruses on Macs (has on mine). Getting rid of those frees up space and keeps you from inadvertently sharing a bad file with a machine running Windows.