No viruses for Mac eh?

[ecookman]

http://www.securitynewsdaily.com/mac-trojan-av-software-kill-1258/
I like this part
"As always, it's important to understand that Macs are not immune to malware, and all Apple devices, from iPads to iPhones to iPods and laptops, can be compromised."

[Tony]

Article talks about a trojan, not a virus. Still, the point stands -- users can obviously install malware, if they really want to. It's incredibly difficult to protect users from themselves.

Quote:

the Trojan was found hiding inside phony Adobe Flash Player installers

I don't think it had ever been claimed that Mac users can't hurt themselves.

[ProgrammingFun]

Did you completely miss the MacDefender saga?

[ecookman]

@PF - Yup

This was meant as more of a well Trojans and Malware are now being detected more frequently, who's to say that Viruses aren't already readily available.

[Insectoid]

A virus and a trojan are very, very different. To date, no virus has been found on OS X.

No computer is immune to malware. No matter how secure your computer is, if you enter your password to install a piece of software, it can do pretty much anything.

In order for a virus to do anything serious, it must have permission to do so. Getting permission requires the user to enter his password during installation. If a virus needs deliberate user interaction to install, it isn't a virus, because a virus, by definition, must be able to spread on its own.

[Tony]

technically a self propagating malware is a "worm". A virus typically infects and is spread through some host. The infection of a new host _is_ (ideally) as hidden as possible though... so the rest of the point is still valid.

[rdrake]

I've only ever heard "more secure," not "immune."

Adobe software has lately been one of the largest sources of security holes on every major OS.

[mirhagk]

I heard last year about a certain java based bug that caused a huge security vulnerability on all OS's. It was fixed by windows and linux with days by it took a couple months and someone actually writing the code to exploit it (although not actually creating the virus) for Mac to actually care.

If I remember correctly it was due to being able to pass a snippet of code to a calendar class which had too much permissions and basically allowed any web page to include code that could run as if it were a java program on the machine (ie had hard drive access)