OS X & Malware?

[Joel92]

I'm just wondering, what exactly prevents viruses & malware from working on Mac OS X? Or is this even true, because it doesn't seem to make sense to me.


Regards,
Joel

[TheGuardian001]

As far as I know, The reason is the same as why there are no Games on the Mac, that being that although it's not impossible to make them, the userbase is so much smaller that it's not worth the effort to make them for it.

Until recently, there weren't very many Mac users out there (in comparison to windows), so there was no reason to make a virus for them. More viruses will start showing up as more people begin using it. Snow leopard now comes with built in malware protection software, although that has been proven to be rather underwhelming.

[bbi5291]

OS X is also Unix-like, and thus much more secure than Windows.

[rdrake]

Nobody cares about OS X.

[Joel92]

Thanks for all the replies, I knew "impossible" sounded a little bit fishy.

Regards,
Joel

[apomb]

rdrake @ Sun Aug 30, 2009 11:50 pm wrote:

Nobody cares about OS X.

Thats awfully dismissive and unnecessary in this discussion.

I updated to Snow Leopard last night. I'm happy with my decision. That malware detection "feature" wasnt even on my radar when researching the upgrade. So, when it is touted as being "underwhelming", I say someone is looking for something to complain about an OS they dont like because thy're a windows fanboy.

[andrew.]

Seeing that OS X is Unix-like, it is very secure by nature and doesn't really need malware protection. For the virus to actually do something bad, you would have to give it your password.

[jbking]

Just to point out a couple of stories about OS X and it having vulnerabilities:

Mac hacked for $10,000 is a story from a couple of years ago about a Mac being hacked. Arpil 2007 date for that story.

MacBook Air hacked in security contest is an example of OS X having a vulnerability. March 2008 in this case.

[andrew.]

I didn't say it wasn't vulnerable. I'm just saying that it is much more secure than a Windows computer with no anti-virus.

[saltpro15]

I'd just like to add that anti-virus/malware protection software will NEVER work because the people who write them have the same access to those programs as you, and will just make sure their program can get around the block...

Linux is great. Period.
Mac is also great if you can live with the fact that you're just jumping on the bandwagon...

[DtY]

andrew. @ Tue Sep 01, 2009 8:47 am wrote:

Seeing that OS X is Unix-like, it is very secure by nature and doesn't really need malware protection. For the virus to actually do something bad, you would have to give it your password.

Except that it still has the biggest issue that Windows has; you can make any account an administrator account, so you really lose a lot of security. (There are other advantages from being Unix though, like you can't start a process that doesn't show up in the task manager (ps on mac))

[bbi5291]

DtY @ Tue Sep 01, 2009 10:29 am wrote:

andrew. @ Tue Sep 01, 2009 8:47 am wrote:

Seeing that OS X is Unix-like, it is very secure by nature and doesn't really need malware protection. For the virus to actually do something bad, you would have to give it your password.

Except that it still has the biggest issue that Windows has; you can make any account an administrator account, so you really lose a lot of security. (There are other advantages from being Unix though, like you can't start a process that doesn't show up in the task manager (ps on mac))

You can make any account an adminstrator account on Linux too. Simply set the uid in /etc/passwd to 0.
I guess the difference is that people who are smart enough to do that are smart enough to realize that it's a bad idea.

[bbi5291]

I suppose I should mention that since Unix is a much more friendly environment for application programs than Windows, even though it's quite difficult for a virus to gain root access, in the case that it does, it's extremely difficult to remove. It can even load itself as a kernel module. But I've never come across a Windows virus that I was unable to remove (the most difficult one I have seen yet was still nothing sophisticated; buffer overflow; some evil .dlls, some entries in HKLM/Software/Microsoft/Windows/CurrentVersion/Run)

[Dan]

andrew. wrote:

Seeing that OS X is Unix-like, it is very secure by nature and doesn't really need malware protection. For the virus to actually do something bad, you would have to give it your password.

This is normally the case, however there have been expolites in the past that have allowed a limited user to gain root access. Also if there is an expolite in any program running with root level access, then that can be used to gain control as well, unless the porgram is jailed or chrooted. For example an expolite in Apache (or even some evil php scripts) running at root level could make the hole computer vulnerable (and php worms are very common in some web apps like wordpress).

DtY wrote:

Except that it still has the biggest issue that Windows has; you can make any account an administrator account, so you really lose a lot of security.

This requires an admin acount to do in new versions of windows (vista and 7). The bigest problem i would say is that they encorage users to use admin accounts as normal user accounts, but again in new versions of windows they do have a a pop up requering comfromation each time you try to run a pervialged command or program.

DtY @ 1st September 2009, 10:29 am wrote:

(There are other advantages from being Unix though, like you can't start a process that doesn't show up in the task manager (ps on mac))

I am prity sure there are root kits for *nix based computers.



I would say one of the bigest advantages Linux (and other FOSS) has, is that security expolites are fixes exteramly fast due to the open source natature and comunities around the software. No one has to wait around for a singal company to issue an security patch well worms are being made to expolite it.

If you want your system to be secure (no matter what kind of system it is) keep every application and the OS up to date with the newest patchs, updates and hot fixes. Also a router with a firewall will help filter out worms and other attacks.

[Insectoid]

Quote:

This requires an admin count to do and a password in new versions of windows

I dunno how trustworthy that statement is. In OS X (I know it's not Windows) you can boot to the command prompt, create a new user and promote it to admin without giving any credentials, thus allowing you complete access to the entire computer (you can delete existing passwords by typing in the one you used for the account)