The facts speak for themselves. There are no active viruses for OS X - after 4 years. None. Zero. There are Macro viruses that infect MICROSOFT Word and Excel. Spreading FUD is simply the Microsoft way. They should spend more time fixing their own little mess of proprietary viruses.
Fixing vulnerabilities is not the same as de-infecting machines. Symantec is simply trolling for business where there isn't any. A bit like an umbrella salesman in Dubai.
i can never figure out whether symantec and their ilk are in the antivirus or the journalism biz.
when i want the news i'll turn to the paper, not a guy quoting symantec press releases, which are frequent and always the same. they've been releasing reworded versions of this article for a couple of years now.
let it also be noted that the author of the article completely misunderstood his data.
the symantec report counts system vulnerabilities, not hacker attacks. the statement 'hacker attacks are on the rise' (paraphrasing) cannot be validated from his information.
when i want the news i'll turn to the paper, not a guy quoting symantec press releases, which are frequent and always the same. they've been releasing reworded versions of this article for a couple of years now.
I'm sorry TMR, if this has already been posted, but I thought it was an interesting PR spin by non-mac people.
It's important to recognize and discount FUD, but it's equally important to know where your chosen platform's weaknesses are.
Bottom line: there is <i>some</i> truth to the line that Mac OS has protection through obscurity, but what's less often said is that it's configured to be more secure than Windows out of the box. There are lot of lazy journalists out there who seem to think that "inherently more secure" and "more secure because less popular" are mutually exclusive. In fact, both statements apply to the Mac.
Right now, the compelling reasons for using anti-virus software are to prevent your machine from passing along Windows viruses and to protect yourself from Word and Excel macro viruses. I'm not sure either purpose warrants running some bloated resource-hog AV program. (In my case, I have no use for macros so I simply turn them off by default.)
In the short term, I'd be most concerned that spyware authors will start to port their "products" to the Mac. Makes sense, if more home users are adopting Macs...good protection here is to run as an ordinary user, not an admin, for day-to-day surfing. That way, all software installs require the admin password.
Well, Toronto's own CablePulse 24 -- you know; that bastion of high tech -- published an article on this. Shockingly, it reads like some PC zealot's Geocities rant page!
Quote:
Attention: smug Mac users. You're not safe anymore.
__________________ 32GB iPad 1 WiFi. 2011 Mac Mini Server (used as a workstation) 2GHz quad-core i7/8GB/1TB, 24" BenQ LCD, 17" NEC LCD, Magic Trackpad. MacBook 2.4GHz Core2 Duo/2GB/200GB/DL-DVDRW. Apple TV 2, 32" flat panel TV, Logitech DiNovo Edge BT keyboard & trackpad. >5TB of FW drives, 16GB iPhone 4S. In memoriam: my Sawtooth "Frankenmac" with upgraded dual 1.3GHz G4/2GB/360GB striped RAID/DVDRW/ATI Radeon 9000 Pro
both articles state 'there has been a rise in attacks on macintosh computers by hackers'. both fail to support this statement.
then they say attacks will rise as a result of mini sales, which haven't even been produced or sold in mass quantities yet, so that can be substantiated.
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