Snow Leopard includes Anti-Virus?

[devburke]

Actually they invent them for money. Things that exploit the OS can sell for hundreds of thousands of dollars on the black market, or hackers can just use them themselves like a business. If not for money then for recognition so they can sell their next one for money, fortunately for macs nobody wants to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars for an exploit that targets 5% of computer users. OSX has already been brought down, more than once, but they were at hacking contests where winners get a bunch of money but they have to tell how they did it and how to fix the hole, it was pretty much proven that OSX is the most insecure OS.

Yeah but at those contests the hackers had direct access to the machines, didn't they?

 

[devburke]

No, it is mostly about market share. There are all kinds of devices attached to the Internet, that are completely unsafe and probably not even upgradeable, but no one bothers to target them. Mac OS X falls in that category. Or, it did. It is on the radar now.

People have been saying that for years. We're always just on the verge of getting viruses, yet they never seem to surface.

 

[stainlessliquid]

Yeah but at those contests the hackers had direct access to the machines, didn't they?

No, the person on the mac was only told to go to a URL, it would be the same situation for someone looking for something on google.

 

[Amdahl]

People have been saying that for years. We're always just on the verge of getting viruses, yet they never seem to surface.

Viruses are passe; mal-ware or trojans distributed straight from the source(meaning, compromised websites or downloads) is what's in. That's why there are now Mac trojans, and if you've been watching the news, a rootkit has been created and is available.

If you think the late 1990s are ever going to repeat on the Mac, ya, you'll be waiting awhile. But you're also going to miss the disease right under your nose.

 

[adamk77]

 

 

[creon]

To the consternation of Windows fanboys everywhere, yes it is.

No OS is completely safe. The iPhone OS had a leak in its code. Luckily it was found by a sane person and not a "Window Fanboy" hellbent on world domination.

 

[EmperorDarius]

I've been thinking of something like this for a lot of time, just didn't expect it so early. I hope this doesn't work only with Safari, but anyway, it's for sure an additional boost in security and will surely protect that naive user base which gets infected by malware (don't want to insult non-naive users who got infected of course).