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Symantec admits Zero virus' for Mac OSX

symantec.com — Finally, straight talk from someone inside Symantec.

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  • titlesaysitall, on 10/12/2007, -65/+12He is basically saying the same thing, just because there is no viruses/trojans for OS X doesn't mean there won't be any. And how does Symantec admit there is a virus right now for OS X? Marked as inaccurate
    • i440, on 10/12/2007, -64/+11Uhh. Let me guess. You use Linux, right?

      "Well, Mac OS X has zero viruses, but Linux has -184984093284 viruses. Take that n00bz...LOLROFLMAOBBQ!!!111!!!111!"
    • titlesaysitall, on 10/12/2007, -38/+11No I don't Linux at all, i'm just saying that article has been echoing what has been said before "just because there is no viruses for Mac OS X doesn't mean there will never be a virus"
    • dvlname, on 10/12/2007, -19/+15@ titlesaysitall

      This article is a guide to individuals who want to make a informed decision and educate themselves to security threats. So thank you for making the same point as the article.
    • aptget, on 10/12/2007, -2/+33Mac OS X, Linux, or BSD systems have a lot less viruses due to not being on Administrator accounts. Any kind of software or scripts that require a password can do damage no matter what OS it is. On Windows, .exe, .vbs, .bat, .cmd., etc can load without warning, thus making it unsafe.

      If Windows fixes this, viruses go down at least 80%. If Vista would've shipped in late 2005, I might've used it if it was safe. I've lost faith in Microsoft though, so it's 100% Ubuntu for me. Currently waiting to see what Edgy and Edgy+1 will have and then I'll compare them to Mac OS X Leopard and the Intel Core 2 Duo machines. I could end up ditching an installed Ubuntu and just sticking to LiveCDs if I like what I see with Apple.

      Next year will be the most important year in computing since Microsoft released Windows 95 in the 90s.
    • radiofrequency, on 10/12/2007, -4/+41Thousands of people have writen games, math, statistics analysis, graphics, music, web browser, office suites and productivity software for non-Windows operating systems for years. Combined, they have spent many thousands of man-years developing all this stuff. Yet even after so much time and so much effort expended, there are no viruses for platforms other than Windows. How many lines of code/hours does it take to write a virus/spyware program, anyway?

      Frankly, Microsoft's claims about being targeted because Windows is popular does not compute. Windows is targeted because insecurity is part of its DNA.
    • inkswamp, on 10/12/2007, -2/+13> Mac OS X, Linux, or BSD systems have a lot less viruses due to
      > not being on Administrator accounts.

      But even the "admin" account on OS X has some fairly stringent, system-wide safeguards in place so what you're saying is not technically accurate. I don't know what Linux and BSD allow an admin account to do, but on OS X, an admin account is nowhere near as powerful as root. OS X has an excellent system in place wherein any changes made outside of your home directory and (I think) the applications folder require a privileged user password to be explicitly typed in by the user. Conceivably, a virus on OS X could wipe out a user's home directory, but it would have a very hard time hosing the whole system or replicating itself.
    • bvaughn, on 10/12/2007, -4/+13Then what does Symantec Antivirus for Mac do?

      http://www.symantec.com/Products/enterprise?c=prodinfo&refId=825&cid=1008
    • Quix, on 10/12/2007, -1/+40"Then what does Symantec Antivirus for Mac do?"

      Takes money out of your wallet.
    • zybch, on 10/12/2007, -26/+5So it kind of works the same as Apple corp then...
    • i440, on 10/12/2007, -18/+0Titlesaysitall,

      Why did we both get buried and not just me? I'm quite perplexed.
    • Bradl3y, on 10/12/2007, -2/+20OS X Does have a virus, it is called "Norton Anti". It deceives you by appearing to be a useful peice of software, but then does nothing useful and instead wastes resources.
    • Balanced, on 10/12/2007, -4/+6It's also nice to have an antivirus tool on Macs to prevent spreading infected documents around.
    • titlesaysitall, on 10/12/2007, -9/+1@i440 I am perplexed as well.
    • frem001, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3Wouldn't Norton Anti Virus prevent viruses (that don't do anything on a mac) from spreading through files that you share with windows hugging hippies?
  • slowelectron, on 10/12/2007, -12/+3Thanks. I won't install your Norton's software on my PowerBook.
    As if...
    • holmes101, on 10/12/2007, -11/+1Ya, and maybe I'll install it on my linux. :)
    • zybch, on 10/12/2007, -1/+7Installing norton AV will probably result in more lost productivity and hear-tearing than any virus would cause.
      Seriously, that program totally blows ass!
      I'd rather be infected than to have to use NAV on any system.
  • metsfansam, on 10/12/2007, -16/+4I have Norton on my iBook. I've detected a virus (maybe a windows virus I dunno). And if Mac OS X gets more popular it will be useful.
    • slowelectron, on 10/12/2007, -2/+22I had Norton on my old iBook. When I finally realized it was useless, it was very difficult to uninstall.
    • metsfansam, on 10/12/2007, -5/+4They have a special uninstall tool...at least they do now.
    • slowelectron, on 10/12/2007, -3/+12That's the problem - why a special uninstall tool? Almost all other Mac apps - drag and drop to the Trash. Or better yet, zap it with AppZapper. Norton is too invasive.
    • foolfromhell, on 10/12/2007, -11/+2Never knew that, I though OSX had its own version of a registry. so... dragging and dropping uninstalls? awesome! but then, if installing an app, it might say "program is already installed", Where does the installer get the info that its alrdy installed? In Windows, it gets it from the registry. What about OSX?
    • fideli, on 10/12/2007, -1/+5@foolfromhell,

      If you drag-install a newer version of the program, it'll be just as if you're replacing an older version of a file. Something like, "Are you sure you want to replace this?"

      To be fair, not all programs are like this. I've never installed Norton's (or anyone else's) antivirus on my Mac but the most invasive program I found was Adobe Acrobat Professional. I used a tag team including AppZapper and Adobe's Uninstaller to beat it out of my system.
    • soopafly, on 10/12/2007, -2/+3@ foolfromhell

      Installing an app on a Mac is simply dragging and dropping to the Applications folder (or basically where ever you want). If it's already installed...you'll see it in the folder.
    • gaberm1972, on 10/12/2007, -1/+5Before you -digg him to much, he has a point. Running Norton AV on a mac will prevent the spread of a windows virus if you have your mac on a network and is the primary machine you use. It is possible for you to get an email on the mac that has an infected file. Transfer that file to your jump drive and thats all she wrote for the windows machines it hits.
    • The_Decryptor, on 10/12/2007, -3/+2"the most invasive program I found was Adobe Acrobat Professional."

      Microsoft Office is a bitch to uninstall, their "Remove Office" app doesn't actually remove Office (in my case anyway), so i had to do it by hand, Luckily all that involved was trashing the dir in /Applications and nuking the prefs.
    • hurfydurfur, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2@The_Decryptor: Because MS wrote it that way. They have no reason to make Office some special app. You can put all app resources under the .app and follow the mac drag-and-drop way, but they chose not to (or didn't choose), who knows. Also, Office is really slow, I don't know what compilier they use or whatever -- a lot of people say it's unreasonably unoptimized. Microsoft software on Mac is a massive exception to the rule.

      Yes, OSX has a type of registry. If you "uninstall" Firefox, by drag and dropping to the trash, then you might still have a Preferences file in ~/Library/Preferences/org.mozilla.Firefox.preferences (or something close to that). You can remove it if you want, but then you'd lose your Firefox settings if you installed Firefox again.

      Apple preference files can cause the same issues that registry cob-webs cause. Sometimes, Windows users do a clean install by clearing out some registry hives, Apple users do the same thing by deleting ~/Library/Preferences files. It's the same cobweb issue. Although there's no InstallShield, setup.exe, install, uninstall on Mac. You just treat an application, game, program like a regular file -- copy, move, delete. The app doesn't care. Want to move World of Warcraft to an external USB drive? Just move it.
  • Wulf, on 10/12/2007, -5/+10Piece is excellent, but the headline on Digg is... well... kinda biased.
    • chewbaka, on 10/12/2007, -2/+0... and grammatically confusing. Symantec is saying a virus named Zero is in possession of OSX?
    • funduk, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1uhh... "Symantec admits Zero virus' [aka 'viruses'] for Mac OSX" is the title... pretty self explanatory if you ask me. Maybe 'Zero' shouldn't have been capitalized... either way, I managed to figure it out.
  • futurekill, on 10/12/2007, -20/+6Isn't the plural of virus virii?
    • tormented, on 10/12/2007, -15/+4Thats like the mice vs mouses argument.
    • moofree, on 10/12/2007, -2/+23Except virii isn't even a word. The plural of virus is viruses.
    • earthtoandy, on 10/12/2007, -3/+17Viruses is correct.
    • NSResponder, on 10/12/2007, -7/+3No. Next question?

      -jcr
    • stmiller, on 10/12/2007, -3/+1"Symantec admits Zero virus' for Mac OSX"

      not virus'
      but
      viruses.

      It's not possesive.

      /Disclaimer:
      I too am a product of the horrible US public school system.


    • chewbaka, on 10/12/2007, -3/+1why bury the parent? he was just asking a legit question. way to discourage people from participating in the site.
    • funduk, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1I don't think it's discouraging people from using the site, hopefully it's encouraging them to RTFM, in other works, GOOGLE IT.
  • earthtoandy, on 10/12/2007, -2/+5i thought the article was well written and objective

    of course it became a sales pitch at the end which was a bit too much for me, but still tastefully done.
  • aptget, on 10/12/2007, -15/+1deleted
  • BenStockwell, on 10/12/2007, -3/+12According to Wikipedia - "In the English language, the standard plural of virus is viruses. This is the most frequently occurring form of the plural, and refers to both a biological virus and a computer virus"
  • corsairstw, on 10/12/2007, -2/+14OS X is inherently a safer, more secure OS. There will probably always be less holes in the system than XP but that doesn't mean that it will be entirely bulletproof.

    (Though I like to think that OS X is a completely safe environment)
  • mikev, on 10/12/2007, -8/+5pwnt
  • earthtoandy, on 10/12/2007, -1/+8P.S. with the threat level (read: zero) it is worthless to run Virus software. It causes more problems than the potential threat any.

    Another thought is to not be dumb. No OS is immune from stupid users
  • moofree, on 10/12/2007, -10/+4Just wait till an HFS-aware windows virus hits boot campers.
    • Greedy, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2BootCamp just lets you install a standard copy of XP SP2 on your Mac.
      It's no different than a PC once XP is installed via BootCamp and therefor
      you can get any Windows virus the same way you would on a standard PC.

      Windows doesn't use HFS...
    • chazzek, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3@Greedy

      Windows isn't HFS-aware, but it's possible to write a virus that is. If a Mac running Windows got such a virus, it could potentially trash the OS X partition. A cleverly written virus could even run on both platforms and infect OS X from Windows, bypassing OS X security. Is this a big threat? I don't think so. I'd like to think that any user skilled enough to be installing Windows on a Mac will either run a virus scanner or know how to be careful. Still, it's something to keep in mind should Mac users run Windows: the whole system is vulnerable to malicious code, not just the Windows partition.
    • hurfydurfur, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2Wait a minute... can you load an HFS driver without a user prompt in Windows? Would the virus have to reboot Windows? Wouldn't you have to have a WHQL HFS driver loaded to even read the HFS partition? Otherwise, you get that massive error dialog "This driver isn't certified! STOP INSTALLATION || CONTINUE ANYWAY". I guess it's possible although a sad statement if you can do that kind of stuff in the background.
    • funduk, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1you're right, all that would happen, security dialogs 'this driver isn't signed' and so on and so forth depending how it was written... the main problem here is that people just click 'continue' and 'yes' to every dialog because they're stupid/sick and tired of fighting with windows... How do you think people get like 15 toolbars in ie6? they click YES a LOT! :p
  • abagchee, on 10/12/2007, -5/+11@titlesaysitall

    "just because there is no viruses for Mac OS X doesn't mean there will never be a virus"

    All OSX users that actually know the underpinnings of the OS (and are not foaming at the mouth with zeal) will tell you that claiming that OSX will never get a virus is naive and sophomoric. However, the facts stand, as stated by Symantec, that

    a) there are currently no known OSX viruses.
    b) the so-called worms could not spread because you had to work hard to propagate it. Which literate computer user would enter his/her password when trying to open a jpg file asks for your admin password?
    c) OSX is currently and into the foreseeable future, is the most secure operating system by virtue of its current status.

    Malware is a distinct possibility but its also sophomoric to call OSX is secure by obscurity. There are millions of Apple users. But the OS provides safety from a rock solid BeOS core and ingrained user-level security. Microsoft is claiming Vista to have similar underpinnings which should make it more secure. But again, not at the same level as OSX since a virus was released a couple of days after Vista Beta 1 was released. Wait and see how this pans out....
    • moofree, on 10/12/2007, -1/+10Not BeOS, it's based on NeXT.
    • MariusTh, on 10/12/2007, -3/+4It's based on NeXT, not Be
    • gaberm1972, on 10/12/2007, -4/+2I took the apple cert test, and I don't remember NeXT being on the test. Apple tells you that it is baised on the Darwin build. The network stack is baised on BSD if I remember right. Is Darwin baised on NeXT? I don't remeber that?
    • wembley, on 10/12/2007, -1/+5The Cocoa API is based on NeXT
    • nomore, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4Cocoa API *IS* NeXT, hence why all the funcations start with 'NS' (NeXTSTEP)
    • eczarny, on 10/12/2007, -2/+1It has a BSD core, it uses the XNU kernel (based off of Mach). The Cocoa frameworks are from NeXT.
    • redwngsycho, on 10/12/2007, -2/+0There may be millions of Apple, but it is still a significantly small piece of the pie. According to (http://www.w3schools.com/browsers/browsers_stats.asp), OSX only holds a 3.6% marketshare in the OS market. Consider that compared to the 92% marketshare that all of the Windows operating systems have combined. When a person writes a virus, or worm, or whatever, they do so to cause damage. Why would someone waste their time writing a virus for macs when it won't cause that much damage? They would rather spend their time writing a virus that could cause damage to millions upon millions of computers...which would mean on the Windows platform. Now granted, Windows does have it's flaws...but as we have discovered in the past few months, so does OSX. I think people are a little too hasty to pick on Microsoft.
    • hurfydurfur, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2@redwngsycho: Popularity speculation has little to do with it IMHO. Vista is copying the OSX "sudo model" for good reason. With all the Mac haters, I think there's motivation enough to do ANY kind of damage.
    • funduk, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1"Why would someone waste their time writing a virus for macs when it won't cause that much damage?"

      Because it would shut up a lot of mac users, unfortunately, most of the malware writers are just out to make money and it all comes down to installed base and clicks, the mac doesn't have this... these days we don't really have the oldschool hackers experimenting with breaking os' and stuff i suppose. if someone's using a mac they love it and wouldnt want to hurt it, if they aren't using a mac they probably think "ehh who cares about 'MAC', ZOMG LOL MACS ARE SO GAY!111!!" ... or something :p
  • chumbermonkey, on 10/12/2007, -11/+2The Lincoln NE public schools had a mac virus. More like maleware or spyware. But the entire system was down for a week.
    • TheReport, on 10/12/2007, -2/+5"The Lincoln NE public schools had a mac virus. More like maleware or spyware. But the entire system was down for a week"

      Yeah that was probably more like a dumb ass administrator signing in as Root and letting anything install onto the network. Like someone previously mentioned. No OS is immunte to stupid users, there should be no reason for anyone to sign in as root, normally Ever.
    • MariusTh, on 10/12/2007, -0/+8That must have been Classic Mac's
  • jerwood, on 10/12/2007, -1/+5I love his closing thought: "As I tell my internal and external customers alike, just because there are no file-infecting viruses that can affect Mac OS X now, that doesn't mean there won't be a really nasty one released in the next five minutes." I'm sure that he meant that to be a good reason to buy his firm's wares---but that's exactly the kind of thing that Virus scanning software can't protect against. A good zero-day exploit is the event Symantec is least able to help in. Antivirus is most relevant when you are awash in live viruses, and have to keep dealing with old exploits that continually threaten you. If Apple can keep ahead of what actual live threats occur, then full-up anti-virus has little use for purely OSX machines. The real Mac market for them will be selling to people who want to run Windows on their Mintelacs.
    • tonyspencer, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Well, NAV does scan for suspicious activity, and it does get rid of OS Classic viruses, and Windows viruses that can be propagated by mail. And of course, it scans for macro viruses which can affect Macs if you use Office. It also checks pretty frequently for updates, so if a virus for OS X did come along, you'd get the protection as soon as it was done, which is better than waiting for a scare and finding out the local stores have sold out...

      And, as they say, it protects against existing trojans and worms.

      Personally, I've been surprised that a rabid anti-Mac person hasn't produced an OS X virus - they have had 6 years to do it.
  • gafasiesornivek, on 10/12/2007, -5/+0Symantec is such a piece of ***** joke of a company that it's hilarious you would even quote them for this. I guess it speaks volumes to the calibre of user Norton attracts - you know, mac-types. Real men use Nod32.
    • Boondoggle, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4Real men don't waste their time with virus prone OSes
  • swordphish, on 10/12/2007, -5/+1"As I tell my internal and external customers alike, just because there are no file-infecting viruses that can affect Mac OS X now, that doesn't mean there won't be a really nasty one released in the next five minutes."

    My theory is this: any virus written for Mac OS X will work in theory/concept. But the Mac community is simply too hardened (socially and perhaps even technologically) for any virus/worm to truly infect more than a handful of people. This is the main difference between a Mac and a PC: the people using the machines.
    • CrankyMcGuy, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2@swordphish
      Although the state of things might be that way right now, if there suddenly appeared on the scene a Mac screensaver of Jessica Alba nude that prompted for admin password in order to install a lot of idiots would happily type in their username and password. I don't believe that viruses are going to be a problem for OS X, but malware is another beast altogether. The Symantec piece was surprisingly low on FUD (no, really. Compared to other press releases by them I've read...) but brings up some valid points. I don't think their software can do anything about zero day exploits as the lurid digg title suggests is a problem...
    • CrankyMcGuy, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2Heh. I misread the title. That's "Zero virus'" not "zero day virus". Gotta go to bed...
    • Vermifax, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1Now, I'd risk a virus for a nude screensaver of Jessica Alba.

      That girl's hotter than the Devil's armpit!
    • Boondoggle, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2And a lot more appealing...
  • superkendall, on 10/12/2007, -2/+2There might have been a virus in the next five minutes - before Apple shifted to the Intel platform. It's not that the Intel chip is immune from viruses, it's that going forward virus writers would have to decide to target PPC or Intel macs for exploits.

    If there has not been a virus to date on the PPC platform, then would it not make sense to assume that the number of Intel macs sold would have to almost equal the current number of PPC macs for virus writers to take interest? That is exactly what you must believe if you think the reason Macs have no viruses is because of sheer numbers of Macs compared to other platforms.

    That would thus mean a number of years ahead where you could be fairly sure no OS X viruses would be forthcoming.
  • maxplanar, on 10/12/2007, -1/+8'Team B': The Soviet Union has non-sonar-based submarine detection technology that we cannot detect. Because we are unable to detect it, it obviously exists. Therefore we must spend more on our own military. You may buy that from us.

    Neocons: Sadaam Hussein has WMD and will use them. Only such terrifying weapons would be hidden so well that we are unable to find them. Since we cannot find them, they obviously exist, so we must invade Iraq. You may buy your equipment from us.

    Symantec et al: Viruses could possibly infect the OSX operating system in the future. Since none exist today, the threat to your data is enormous. You may buy your antivirus software from us.

    Fearmongering - a longstanding tradition that should NEVER be trusted. OSX - virus free ever since it was developed.
  • coldfusion1970, on 10/12/2007, -2/+1I might as well go ahead and uninstall VirusBarrier now.
  • rgawron, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4Where Symantec antivirus is useful is for finding and repairing Microsoft Word Macro Viruses. In an office of mixed Macs and PC's, if someone with a PC sends you an infected Word file, it can infect Word's .normal file, which can than cause your Mac to create infected Word files. These aren't really a problem on the Mac (Though occasionally, I have seen a file get trashed, so that the data from it cannot be recovered) , but when passed back to a person on the PC, can hose their whole system.

    So the only vector for infection on the Mac is a Microsoft Product. Typical.
    • DelMonte, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1Word Macro viruses can only affect older version of Office running under Mac OS 9 and earlier.

      None of the MS Macro viruses work on OS X.
  • afruff23, on 10/12/2007, -6/+0News Flash: Norton doesn't detect *****
    I've run norton tests on my PC and they always come up with nothing. I run some spwayer remover and it founds dozens of malicious spyware/adware.
    • ThirdPrize, on 10/12/2007, -1/+5Duh! That is because they are not viruses.
  • ThirdPrize, on 10/12/2007, -6/+2What's the point of writing a Mac virus if only 2% of the computers out there can run it? It would be a fairly self defeating exercise.
    • althe3rduww, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5Cause its not 2% of users.

      Its 22% of users. You need to learn the difference between market share and market population. Market share is the number of computers sold in a fiscal year. Example: Make a computer that some people buy but needs to be replaced quicker you will have a higher market share than the competition.

      Apples systems traditionally and even today last longer due to the way apple optimizes software and the os. So if you wish to speak about the number of people using a system in the market you need to understand that market population for OS X is much much higher.
  • Banagor, on 10/12/2007, -6/+2/me stands up

    What's a virus?

    /other/

    Shut the ***** up!

    /me shrugs and sits down.
  • ianbetteridge, on 10/12/2007, -2/+1@Greedy:

    "BootCamp just lets you install a standard copy of XP SP2 on your Mac. It's no different than a PC once XP is installed via BootCamp and therefor you can get any Windows virus the same way you would on a standard PC."

    You're missing the previous poster's point. It wouldn't be difficult to write a Windows virus which included a driver to read/write HFS+ volumes. There's already open source code for HFS+ support for LInux, which would tell a competant coder about how to create an equivalent for Windows. Because this would run under Windows, it would have none of the protections you'd get from Mac OS X - so it could infect any file on your HFS+ volume.

    A really smart virus writer could, in fact, use this method to write a Windows virus capable of carrying a Mac OS X virus as payload. It would work like this:

    1. Infect Windows machine through the usual methods (mostly social engineering)
    2. Check to see if there's a mountable HFS+ volume.
    3. If there is, inject Mac OS X payload virus into something nice and vital that has complete access to the file system without password-protection (the kernel, for example).
    4. Bingo - one machine that's infected no matter which OS you're running on it.

    What would be the advantage of this? Because Mac OS X users believe that their machines are immune from viruses and malware, they make ideal hosts for botnets - they are much less likely to use virus scanners which would pick up the infection and thus close down botnet nodes. The disadvantage is that, at the moment, the number of people running Windows on Macs is small - but if Boot Camp takes off, that will change.
    • simpleid, on 10/12/2007, -3/+1Shut up, you're giving away some info that should stay silent.
    • DelMonte, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2"Because Mac OS X users believe that their machines are immune from viruses and malware."

      These users only exist in your head. I never saw any Mac users stating that OS X was immune to viruses and malware. And I read a lot of comments and forums about this.

      There are Mac geeks that check for things like that and monitor network traffic externally on Mac networks. A virus like the one you describe would be quickly discovered, and because the structure of the Mac web community, the news would spread much more quickly than the threat. Instructions on how to protect yourself would be posted in the following hours and available at every Mac online news outlets.

      On Windows, there are so many new threats and viruses, that the Windows community simply can't focus on a single one, like the Mac community could if OS X got a first real virus.

      On Windows these days, a new virus/worm/malware is like "blah... yet another malware for Windows... better make sure my anti-malware apps are up to date".

      But for a new threat on Mac OS X, don't you think that the Mac community would work 10x harder to eradicate it so they can keep a clean slate? One by one, any new virus would get taken care of. And it's impossible that Apple would just sit there and wait until there are hundreds of different malware in the wild, like Microsoft did. When MS did react in a meaningful way, it was way too late. They may try their best with Vista, but there is already a big community of hackers, some with commercial interest that are ready to attack Vista on multiple fronts.

      Even if a Windows virus could install something in the OS X partition of a Boot Camp machine, it would just reinforce the fact that people shouldn't run Windows at all, and that it's by far the greatest source of malware.

      Using Parallels Desktop to run Windows would shield you against things like that, as by default it's sand-boxed from OS X and the filesystem.
  • Wuss, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1I'm not here to fight which OS is more virus proned because who has more market share and blah blah blah.

    My one comment is this, Symantec is the last place you want to go to for any sort of virus statistics/information.

    I deal with hundreds of computers across multiple independent networks (not just working in an office on the same 1 network all day, we're IT contractors), and the one thing that is very clear is that Symantec/Norton is completely useless when it comes to proper virus detection and/or removal. AVG, which is free and actually not half as good as it used to be, easily out performs Symantec, and NOD32, a very inexpensive solution, out shines them both.

    So the question is, would you trust a source talking about OSX when their Windows product doesn't even work very well...
    • Metman, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1Well stated.

      Symantec may have a large market share, but experience with their products has shown they are probably not the best source for this kind of information. On more then one occassion I have been alerted to virus/instrusion problems on another pc/server that was running another anti-virus package only to find that the Symantec PC/servers had been infected already undetected.
    • DorXtar, on 10/12/2007, -1/+0I was hoping someone would bring this up. Thanks Wuss.

      I work with symantec corporate at work. It doesn't catch the more "unknown" viruses that teenagers manage to catch on the internet. I don't like AVG, but after installing Avira's Antivirus (also free), it caught trojans and other viruses on a PC with symantec installed. All the while, symantec sat in the icon tray looking pretty with it's yellow shield icon.

      Relying on symantec for virus information is bad mojo. I guess not a lot of people know about symantec's dismal ability to detect viruses. While their computers gently weep, infected, neglected, shivering with multiple virus infections.
  • fabianumpierre, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1pff Norton is a virus.. even in windows...
  • z1freeride, on 10/12/2007, -2/+0I think it's more of a User issue. I've running both Mac and Windows for over a decade and I've never had a virus.
  • quoigonfishin, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1A virus?! On my Compy?!

    Maybe I should introduce you to my main man Edgar!
  • heydigital, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1"...our Security Response team had determined that OSX.Leap.A was a worm, and not a file-infecting virus."

    All symantecs.
  • rocketpocket, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1I question the amount of effort the Symantec and other virus protection corporations put in to stopping virus rather than just patching them for one once there are no more viruses who needs them.
  • garrettmacmini, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0" I've running both Mac and Windows for over a decade and I've never had a virus."

    The same goes here but I've gone to OS X and never going back to Windows
  • dbug, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1If you think you need a virus-scanner for your OSX machine, there's always the free and open source ClamAV. Luckily there's even an OSX friendly port of it with a nice interface: http://www.markallan.co.uk/clamXav/
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