News - Apple drops Mac virus immunity claims

[watercooled]

Eh?

[Zeven]

im just surprised they never got massive bills for this absurd false advertising, misleading customers into thinking they're 100% safe when they never were.. its like going down an alley way, the mugger has two choices mug the guy who looks rich or the little hobo... you will always go for the one that will reap the best rewards (money = user base...).

I must admit i am smiling at how bad Apple is doing at the minute, every other day theres news that somethings been changed or they have lost a court case!

Speaking of mugging the guy who looks rich versus the vertically challenged hobo...

[crossy]

I'm going to show my ignorance here. I thought OS X was based on BSD - and that has the usual *nix scheme of users+privilege escalation. In which case unless you've got a user "sudo-ing" (or whatever the OS X equivalent is) to install some malware-riddled app, then surely they're "safe"?

Reason I ask is that the next in the "we're virus immune" list is obviously Linux, which uses the same user+sudo mechanism already mentioned. Plus one of the household recently mooted the desire to get a Mac - due to looks, student discount, etc. Sigh!

[cameronlite]

I'm LOL'ed; there are so many people whinging and moaning about Apple... What is the chance of my Apple getting infected with a virus? Hmmm... maybe or maybe not... But for PC it is hard to say..

For the record - I was complaining about Apple users

Flashback:
- infected over 600,000 macs
- took 8 months for the antivirus to reach infected machines

On a windows PC, regardless of how many it affected, it would have been patched within 7 days.

[Hicks12]

yeah, they really are doing terribly, bankruptcy cant be far away >_>

cant tell if sarcasm or agreement . I didnt mean bankruptcy, i simply meant in terms of media views and how there massive plan of stopping all forms of competition via silly patent trolling has started to crumble at their feet, its as if they forgot to give money to the legal team to bribe the courts, i mean spend money on building a great case yeah thats what i meant.

Apple will not go bankrupt in along time, they havent spent the money they earned but they will see falling sales and profits, now MS has even jumped back (yes back... they were here before) into the tablet market and is looking mighty appealing so the iPad has stiff competition from that of android tablets and windows tablets which have all markets covered, low/med/high end price points. Phones arent going to well for them either, MS finally making use of Nokia purchase and i can see Google making use of motorola more so as its finally been approved etc and then you also have samsung which is already making a killing and quickly catching up iphone sales.

(note this isnt aimed at you its more a generic statement about apple financially but ofc the first part was ).


BerZerk, OSX systems can and do get infected but the fact people dont take the slight bit of notice as they're "immune" to viruses as Apple has been telling them for years means they dont bother checking etc. If you dont check you wont know, we are way past the days of annoying viruses (i.e pop ups etc) its the silent viruses that are the issue and if you arent looking you wont notice them, its the bank details you get stolen as your system is infected with a keylogger or something similar, yes its more likely to happen on a windows system because there are more windows systems... it has more potential targets but i bet the % rate has fallen rapidly for windows as most users now have some form of protection .

I dont think ive had a virus in many years, ive certainly had less trouble than what i see on the news the last few months in regards to scams and fake apps on Apple systems!. Dont seem to get that on Android or windows, android if its a scam i can get a refund within 15mins and well ive had no viruses on either OS.

Think the best way of avoiding viruses is to not go on dodgy websites and download crap, dont do that and you are very unlikely to get a virus! Common sense rules out 90% of viruses.

(the statistics are made up.)

[watercooled]

OS X is indeed based on Unix, but it's heavily modified, and in many cases in favour of usability instead of security. No Linux users I know claim it to be virus-proof, but it could be down to the desktop Linux user base being generally more experienced users. There is some malware out there for Linux, mostly inert proof-of-concept stuff, but it's laughably complicated to install - you'd essentially have to provide instructions on how to do it, but TBH I can imagine a few people would fall for it.

On the subject of reduced privileges, even Windows runs this way now, until some clot goes about claiming UAC is pointless and advising people to disable it...

[crossy]

OS X is indeed based on Unix, but it's heavily modified, and in many cases in favour of usability instead of security. No Linux users I know claim it to be virus-proof, but it could be down to the desktop Linux user base being generally more experienced users. There is some malware out there for Linux, mostly inert proof-of-concept stuff, but it's laughably complicated to install - you'd essentially have to provide instructions on how to do it, but TBH I can imagine a few people would fall for it.

Thanks, I've claimed that "Linux IS virus proof, but not idiot proof" Think I'll be trying to persuade my potential Mac user to stick to something a bit more "mainstream".

On the subject of reduced privileges, even Windows runs this way now, until some clot goes about claiming UAC is pointless and advising people to disable it...

Aye, I quite like the Windows7 way of doing it - better security than XP, while not being as really, really annoying as Vista's implementation.

[sweey]

At the risk of echoing what's already been said: How long did it take them to do this??!

[Zeven]

The argument now, at least according to one Mac fanboy, is that the chance of getting a virus is still far lower than on Windows. Amusing.

[crossy]

The argument now, at least according to one Mac fanboy, is that the chance of getting a virus is still far lower than on Windows. Amusing.

Probably true - as said above, at the moment at least, Windows PC's are a more attractive target. Of course, loudly claiming that "we're virus proof" is (I would have thought) a sure way to ensure that someone will go out of their way to prove you wrong.

That's kind of why I like Linux and Windows 7 - both make it easiest to operate "safely" - and most folks will choose the path of least resistance.

[aidanjt]

On the subject of reduced privileges, even Windows runs this way now, until some clot goes about claiming UAC is pointless and advising people to disable it...

UAC isn't really safe, it's just slightly safer and less brain damaged than giving everyone and everything unchecked Administrative privileges.

[King Jay]

With such a bold statement it was only a matter of time.

[watercooled]

UAC isn't really safe, it's just slightly safer and less brain damaged than giving everyone and everything unchecked Administrative privileges.

Yeah but it's a step in the right direction at least; as you say, it's hard to do worse than give everything full admin privileges like XP.

[crossy]

Yeah but it's a step in the right direction at least; as you say, it's hard to do worse than give everything full admin privileges like XP.

XP = very stupid, Vista = slightly less stupid but very annoying, Windows 7 = usable. In my book at least.

I'm not getting at anyone, but this isn't the first thread where I've heard some slagging of UAC. In which case I'd be interested to hear what the naysayers would regard as a "better" solution - I'm guessing a full set of defined privilege classes rather than merely a "would you like full control now?" option when required (which is - I guess - what UAC in it's current form boils down to). By the way, I'm not claiming UAC is perfect, but would probably stand by a statement that it's an improvement. Kind of difficult though to do security properly for folks who are only one step up further on from "how do I turn this on?"

And I'm guessing that this is also the tightrope that the OS X designers have had to cross - how do you do "secure" whilst not excluding folks for whom the PC is merely a tool, perhaps even one that's one step removed from typewriter, paper and pen?