Viruses and Macs
 Back in 1986, I had a Mac SE. I had removed 19 viruses from my OS 6 machine. That was the last time I removed a virus from my Mac. Windows users must walk a very careful balance between keeping their machine free from viruses, adware and spyware while not compromising on the performance of their machine. Imagine having to run all of this software to protect yourself from malware before you even get to use your computer at all. You had better have a powerful machine to run all of these programs in the background! But is a Macintosh really safe? Is it really any different than a Windows machine?
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- There are no “real” Mac OS X viruses.
- Do not install AntiVirus software on your Mac to run constantly in the background.
- If anything, run ClamXav once in a while to confirm that you are virus free and to keep from spreading viruses to the Windows community.
- Java viruses and Macro viruses can affect Macs in a minimal way.
- If you run Windows on your Mac, your Windows partition is just as vulnerable as any other PC. It won’t affect the Mac side of things.
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In a corporate or school environment, it may be required that you install antivirus software on your Mac. These requirements are really for Windows users since every Windows machine is a breeding ground for thousands of viruses. It's unfortunate that Macs must abide by the same requirements since the threat is not the same. However, I cannot recommend ClamXav enough. It is a fantastic antivirus program and it is free. You can also customize it to suit your needs so that it doesn't suck too much performance from your machine. That is, have it only check certain directories like your Downloads folder where new files from the internet would be downloaded. Now you can rest assure that your Mac is up to corporate standards and won't be passing any Windows viruses around even though it wouldn't affect you.
And maybe it is just my cynicism but the greatest threats of virus infestation come from users that don't know any better. So it is likely that these users, though they have antivirus software installed, either do not have it configured correctly, have out-of-date virus definitions or don't know what to do when a virus has been found and quarentined. Their only hope is to get a Mac! |
Well, I did a little research on the web to back up my assumptions. Please refer to this article for the details but this Mac user found ZERO viruses that were targeted for OS X. You can also check out this thread for more relief. Now this doesn’t mean that you should let your guard down. For one, your Mac can still be affected by very popular Macro viruses that come from... you guessed it... Microsoft Word and Excel applications. Often, these kinds of Macro Viruses have a very weak payload, especially on a Mac system. It usually just causes problems within Word or Excel. But nonetheless, be warned. Another kind of “cross platform” virus are Java viruses. Java is especially cool because it complies on the fly which means it is OS independent. That is very unique and convenient as far as programming languages go. However, not only is this resource heavy, but it allows for viruses to cross into our precious Mac territory. But again, these often only affect the java application and possibly the host application (like Safari). I did recently remove some Java viruses from a Mac so be warned about that too.
Let’s not forget what a virus is, though. A virus is nothing more than a program. Just as you cannot run a Windows XP program on your Mac (without Boot Camp and Windows installed or some other 3rd party solution like Parallels or VM Ware), viruses designed for Windows will not work on the Mac either. What makes a virus a virus is its malicious intent.
It is well known that one reason that the Mac doesn’t have many (any) viruses is because 90% of the world is Windows. If you are a programmer and spend hours and hours programming a virus, are you going to try to affect 10% of the world or 90% of the world? Obviously, you want to maximize your return and satisfaction. But the truth is, it is more difficult to program a virus for the Mac because the OS is more secure. Windows allows the system to “autorun” programs and “self install” programs. This was an attempt to make the system more user friendly. In a perfect universe this would be fine. But unfortunately, there are some mean people out there with intentions that are less than desirable. So they use Windows’ own tools to propagate these viruses. This is why there are over 350,000 viruses for the PC.
However, your weakest link is not with your system but with the user. Phishing scams are just as effective on Mac users as they are on PC users. Phishing scams are not viruses but they are still exploits of the operating system masquerading as something that they are not.
Most often, the only reason to check for viruses on a Mac is so that you don’t accidentally spread the virus to other PC users. Though I may find using a PC punishment enough, they certainly don’t need the added pain of removing viruses that they got from their Mac friends.
DEFINITELY DO NOT install an antivirus program on your Mac. You don’t need it and it WILL slow your system down by doing constant and futile scans of your media. It would not be a bad idea to run an antivirus program occasionally to be sure that you are virus free.
DEFINITELY DO NOT buy antivirus software. A terrific piece of freeware exists called ClamXav. It is fantastic and it does the job for free. Run it occasionally and enjoy your virus free, adware free, spyware free mac!
(Yes, I know that there is Norton Anti-Virus for the Mac. Why? Because they’ll try to sell snow to an eskimo too. It certainly doesn’t bode well for them that this only supports conspiracy theories that suggest that most viruses are written by the Antivirus software folks. If they didn’t try to sell us Mac users something we didn’t actually need, I’d be a bit more sympathetic to them but... I’m not.)
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