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Why aren't there more trojans?

R

riker1384

macrumors regular
Original poster
Jun 29, 2007
198
20
West Coast
Why aren't there more trojans? I know OSX is supposed to be secure, so there aren't viruses and things can't take over the system, but why isn't there any malicious software out there? Most of the software I use either came with the OS or was free. With all the freeware and things like widgets out there that people download, wouldn't it be easy to write something that does a little useful thing, but also something malicious? Like deleting random files, or searching for documents with bank-related keywords and sending the contents somewhere. Why doesn't this happen, would it really be caught quickly or something?

I get paranoid about this whenever I go around downloading things. I know there's Versiontracker, but I don't think it tracks widgets, and it would defeat the purpose of them being so small and simple if I took that time.
 
I'm no expert but my brother tells me its because there are more windows users than OSX owners. Hence, they don't bother with the smaller crowd, OSX. I would guess that it would take a while to encode a virus. Especially for OSX.
 
Despite the exponential growth that Apple has seen in their computer sector over the last ten years, we're still the minority: by far. The minority is never the captive market for people that want to inflict damage on the greatest numbers possible regardless of any profiling.
 
akonradi said:
Despite the exponential growth that Apple has seen in their computer sector over the last ten years, we're still the minority: by far. The minority is never the captive market for people that want to inflict damage on the greatest numbers possible regardless of any profiling.
Click to expand...

add to it many of the "new" trojans out there for windows are built off older ones and there just is less of a base to work with on OSX as well.
 
Blitzhaeve said:
I'm no expert but my brother tells me its because there are more windows users than OSX owners. Hence, they don't bother with the smaller crowd, OSX. I would guess that it would take a while to encode a virus. Especially for OSX.
Click to expand...

It's not that anymore....we're still a minority, but there are enough Macs in the world that writing a virus or worm for OSX would really mess things up. Especially since most Mac users don't run anti-virus software and we'd be less prepared than Windows users. It's mostly due to the fact that the UNIX platform it's built upon is secure and writing an effective virus is a lot more difficult than on Windows.

And, you have to remember, that a virus written for OSX could probably easily be ported to UNIX and Linux systems, which, when you consider the number of *nix-based servers in the world, would probably screw things up worse than Slammer and Blaster and all of the other worms did
 
yg17 said:
It's not that anymore....we're still a minority, but there are enough Macs in the world that writing a virus or worm for OSX would really mess things up. Especially since most Mac users don't run anti-virus software and we'd be less prepared than Windows users. It's mostly due to the fact that the UNIX platform it's built upon is secure and writing an effective virus is a lot more difficult than on Windows.

And, you have to remember, that a virus written for OSX could probably easily be ported to UNIX and Linux systems, which, when you consider the number of *nix-based servers in the world, would probably screw things up worse than Slammer and Blaster and all of the other worms did
Click to expand...

you forget something in your long standard speech when some one points out the numbers game there. Trojans are not worms but relay on human stupidity which goes around all that protection you listed there.
And in that respect windows just has the numbers and there for is going to take a much larger share of the trojans. Much larger than the % of windows computers out there.
 
Right now I was mainly thinking about this in relation to widgets. I was just browsing and downloading some. They're so simple, and Apple puts them in a directory with no reviews or other information beside what the developer provides, and the popularity rank of it. I'm surprised that no teenage ne'er-do well has ever thought to write a malicious widget. Looking at some of the top 50 widgets, you can make something pretty simple and have it be very popular if you're clever or lucky.
 
Why aren't there more trojans?

Clearly because hackers have come to realise the mindlessly rabid devotion of Apple users, and that writing a trojan may well get them killed by a group of crazed foaming-at-the-mouth fanboys hunting them down.

Either that or they start looking at OSX development for malicious purposes but find themselves, 1984-style, indoctrinated in the end... so that they turn to making shiny utilities instead.
 
NO system is safe from a trojan. there are many thousands upon thousands of people that can write a trojan that could infect a mac/pc/unix system.

i think people are more likely to aim at PC's because it could make more of an impact, make a bigger statement etc. but who's to say what the mind of the software developer is...

as i read somewhere, the safest system is a system that is buried deep underground in a concrete room turned off with nothing connected to it!
 
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