Why is there so little mac malware?
05/05/07 14:05 Filed in: Software
Lack
of Mac malware baffles experts-Exploit authors
continue to ignore OS X: "Apple's
Mac OS X remains almost completely free of any
sort of malware threat despite several years of
availability, a significant market share, and even
an entire month dedicated to pointing out its
flaws. And security experts are not exactly sure
why"
(Via digg.)
(Via digg.)
Another entry in my quest to clear my inbox of blog
posts (this one is only a month old!)
It's a good question, why is mac malware virtually non-existant (there are only 7 apparently!)
Well as a good mac fan boy I should say that the mac is to secure for them, however as a programer working in the internet security business I know this is not the case. Yes OSX is more secure than windows. much much more in the case of XP, and more than Vista, but that's not enough to explain what we see.
So what about the users of mac's? Are they more security aware than PC users? Again I think this is partly true, but in my experience there are two kinds of mac users. There are the users like me, technically savvy (geeks or nerds if you like) who are closely coupled to there machines and pay a lot (maybe to much) attention to every little bit of hard drive activity. These users are unlikely to get infected and if they did the infecting program would be quickly caught and killed and possibly dissected. I get the feeling that currently we make up about half the mac users around. The other half just use macs because they have always used macs. These sorts of people work in music, video or publishing and don't really care what they use as long as the job get done. These users would probably not notice any infection, many because they probably don't run any sort of antivirus software, after all there are no mac viruses!
So again the users may explain part of why we don't see many mac viruses.
So what else is there? Well PC's are very easy targets and there are millions of them out there just waiting to be infected. This means that the malware writers, which by all accounts are run as businesses have to many easy targets to worry about the few much harder targets.
This to me is the reason. There is no reason for them to go after macs...yet.
This could however change. If Vista proves to be very much more secure (I have my doubts about this but you never know Microsoft might have cracked this time) and when it starts to be widely installed, it could be that the mac community could become more attractive to the malware writers. Also remember that mac usage is growing all the time. One other thing may help here and that is most mac users don't have any kind of anti malware measures in place, simply because of the belief that they are safe!
I have to admit I'm in that class. I used to run clamXav on my mac's but I don't any more. I do feel safe due to the fact that I do keep my eye on my systems and the fact that I sit behind the enterprise grade security gateway products of the company that I work for (for free!)
Maybe I should and maybe I will after I get hit by a brand new mac OSX virus. But then maybe macs will always be the safe computers they are today.
Only time will tell.
It's a good question, why is mac malware virtually non-existant (there are only 7 apparently!)
Well as a good mac fan boy I should say that the mac is to secure for them, however as a programer working in the internet security business I know this is not the case. Yes OSX is more secure than windows. much much more in the case of XP, and more than Vista, but that's not enough to explain what we see.
So what about the users of mac's? Are they more security aware than PC users? Again I think this is partly true, but in my experience there are two kinds of mac users. There are the users like me, technically savvy (geeks or nerds if you like) who are closely coupled to there machines and pay a lot (maybe to much) attention to every little bit of hard drive activity. These users are unlikely to get infected and if they did the infecting program would be quickly caught and killed and possibly dissected. I get the feeling that currently we make up about half the mac users around. The other half just use macs because they have always used macs. These sorts of people work in music, video or publishing and don't really care what they use as long as the job get done. These users would probably not notice any infection, many because they probably don't run any sort of antivirus software, after all there are no mac viruses!
So again the users may explain part of why we don't see many mac viruses.
So what else is there? Well PC's are very easy targets and there are millions of them out there just waiting to be infected. This means that the malware writers, which by all accounts are run as businesses have to many easy targets to worry about the few much harder targets.
This to me is the reason. There is no reason for them to go after macs...yet.
This could however change. If Vista proves to be very much more secure (I have my doubts about this but you never know Microsoft might have cracked this time) and when it starts to be widely installed, it could be that the mac community could become more attractive to the malware writers. Also remember that mac usage is growing all the time. One other thing may help here and that is most mac users don't have any kind of anti malware measures in place, simply because of the belief that they are safe!
I have to admit I'm in that class. I used to run clamXav on my mac's but I don't any more. I do feel safe due to the fact that I do keep my eye on my systems and the fact that I sit behind the enterprise grade security gateway products of the company that I work for (for free!)
Maybe I should and maybe I will after I get hit by a brand new mac OSX virus. But then maybe macs will always be the safe computers they are today.
Only time will tell.
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