Even Apples sometimes have worms in them, admits Cupertino Mac computers can be buggy, Apple has finally admitted. Two days ago the firm quietly pulled the claim that the iOS PCs are immune to viruses from its website. The purveyor of shinier-more-expensive desktops has replaced its former claim with the more cautious statement that Macs are "built to be safe". The change was made to …
Nothing wrong with considering an iOS device a Personal Computer (as long as it's remembered that general equates 'PC' with a Windows machine)... but it still isn't a Mac, which run OSX.
Confusion might have been understandable several years ago amongst people who are not technology journalists, because the iPhone was introduced as running OSX (presumably because Apple hadn't yet acquired the name they wanted to use). Unlike Microsoft, Apple appears to see virtue in distinguishing between a finger-driven user interface and a WIMP user-interface, and have thus shown no desire to mash the two together.
Re: A network router operating system.
A rose by any other name... the name iOS was of more value to a consumer electronics company, who paid accordingly to use it, than it was to company who make kit for network engineers- engineers who would, I would imagine, have more experience at determining which version of of whatever of OS is running on which box.
Some facts for you:
1. Although Windows users keep calling Flashback a Mac virus, Flashback is NOT a “virus”. It is a Trojan, and there have been Trojans for the Mac (but not many) in the past. Unlike viruses, Trojans must be installed by the user on his/her own computer.
2. In the 12 years that Mac OS X has been in use by tens of millions of users, there has NEVER been even a single Mac virus in circulation.
3. Apple’s statement before this change is still true: “A Mac isn’t susceptible to the thousands of viruses plaguing Windows-based computers.”. This is completely true as long as you are running Mac OS X. But… if you run Windows on a Mac (either in Boot Camp or in emulation), your Windows OS can get Windows viruses. Even though Windows viruses do not affect Mac OS X, it makes sense that this would be removed since some people do run Windows on their Macs. Apple has no way of stopping Windows viruses from infecting Windows installations.
4. The “After” statement is also true. OS X does “keep you safe from unknowingly downloading malicious software on your Mac”. However it is impossible for any company or person to stop anyone from unwisely downloading a Trojan and installing it themselves, if they make the bad decision to do this.
@Jurassic
Some actual facts for you:
1. The issue here has nothing to do with the various definitions of malicious code, and what category they fall into. It's the fact the Mac made the claim that such an attack could never happen, and it has. Aside from that, the definition Trojan has nothing to do with its delivery method. It could be deployed by a virus (self replicating malicious code), a worm (similar to a viral infection that spreads within a network infrastructure), a piece of malware, spyware or whatever. All the Trojan definition specifies is that it will give access, control, or information from your computer to someone else. Some people might even label remote administrative programs such as dameware, vnc, or logmein as a Trojan.
2. In 12 years apparently a lot of Mac users like to play word definitions games between what constitutes as a Virus. As you said, there have been Trojans in the past.
3. I'm not susceptible to the thousands of virus's that plague plant life, yet you don't hear me going around saying how I'm impervious to all infections. This is very similar to making the claim that a Mac can't get a Window's virus. Apples and Oranges as far as the code is concerned.
The lack of Virus's for mac's has very little to do with how secure or insecure the OS is, and has quite a bit to do with the lack of available targets compared to other alternative operating systems.
4. Your statement right here doesn't even make sense. Maybe you could try again to explain how a "Mac keeps you safe from unknowingly downloading malicious software" if it can't prevent you from "unknowingly downloading malicious software”?
Also, your claim that it’s impossible for a company to develop this kind of protection is false. It's called a virus scanner.
@Jurassic
A trojan is a type of virus. The ones that install themselves are worms. But even if you only consider self-installing viruses then your statement that there's never been a Mac virus in circulation is still wrong. Just to name a few, Leap-A, Koobface, Inqtana have all been in the wild. They are not alone. OS X has long had viruses in the wild, despite Apple's irresponsible denial of the fact.
Every injection vector found in Unix was available in ALL of its progeny. Windows' issues regarding virus stems from its availability to content. My IIc had less than a dozen applications worth a toss while my 8086 would have been closer to 100 and we trafficked them on BBS across the globe.(shout out to EvilOtto in Oslo and LordOak for ThePoison) In the old days, think pre-Dark Avenger, it was a race playing connect the dots and the larger log was king dingaling and not some douche gaining root and nutting things. No one was even thinking of splooging all over the (oh so available to anyone with a student id) nix servers because that's where uber types were sequestering their tool kits, the kids (me) got their BBS/IRC info and those flogging term papers (big coin) hid their wares.
I'd bet we didn't see all the damage until those hard core types, think Iron Curtain countries, went postal over folks with infinitely less skills in the West bragging it up (the IRC logs were painful to read then, we were indeed a$$hat$) about the money being made in virgin IT territory. There were some seriously pissed types being left out of the loop then and people tend to forget those cats had to work with garbage gear so when we were moving into using more wordy languages for convenience sake because our new gear afforded us the cycles to get lazy with things, they were just writing tighter and tighter code. Some of them then decided to blacken a few eyes and boy did they ever.
Apple wasn't similarly afflicted not because Unix couldn't be hit but because MS was the most available face of the arrogant West and some cats wanted to put a fist into that face.
Doh! Please post when a) a little more informed and b) not offering straw men for our consumption.
Traditional old-skool viruses are relatively thin on the ground. Trojans are where it's at these days. Windows PCs get infected cos people click on stuff they shouldn't; it's as simple as that. I clean this stuff up for a living; I'm reasonably qualified to make a qualitative assessment of the problerms out there.
So please stop clinging to the old saw that 'But Macs can only get trojans' - that's pretty much all that >any< machine can get, as it is damned hard to do a straight infection through an AV product these days. Thus 'old-skool' viruses (virii?) really don't figure much any more.
"The previous write-up claimed: "It doesn't get PC viruses. A Mac doesn't get the thousands of viruses plaguing Windows-based computers."
...I'm really not trying to apologise for Apple here, but considering that Macs can run Windows, it is simply flat out wrong to suggest they don't get PC viruses, as a Mac running Windows is as susceptible to PC viruses as a Windows PC is. I honestly suspect that's what this change in advertising is about.
"Then what do you call a computer that run Linux?"
A Linux box, and / or Linux Workstation or Linux Server.
"Is it not a PC?"
Sure it's a personal computer (in some cases) however the colloquial term PC means Windows PC workstation.
"And a Mac that run Linux and/or Windows?"
A dual-booting Mac.
But OS X/iOS CAN'T get Windows viruses, unless they can run PEs with some kind of compatibility layer. The claim is actually true. However, malware can be written for OS X etc like any system (hell, they're BSD-based, I'm surprised we haven't seen Kaiten-variants flooding the market yet). Whether malware exists for a system isn't really worth discussing; it does, for nearly every system (I've never seen malware specifically for Plan 9 From Bell Labs though), their security is down to how good the programming team working for them is, and how good their attitude towards patching is.
I can't comment on their coding skills, because I have never audited Apple software myself, but Apple have a pretty lax attitude towards security patching, as the Flashback incident proved. I don't see why they take several weeks to implement a patch that someone else has written.
Everything else is (including getting client-sided, the primary way to spread malware these days) pretty much nothing to do with the OS and entirely to do with the user.
>"A Mac doesn't get the thousands of viruses plaguing Windows-based computers."
It's not ethical advertising, but I don't think you can really argue it was false. I am pretty certain Apple, a titan with many legal assaults on others under their belt, are careful enough to avoid being done by something so obvious.
>A Mac can get Windows viruses if you use BootCamp. This is not some hacky "void your warranty" thing, BootCamp is mainstream software on the Mac.
BootCamp is included with the Mac but Windows is not. You won't get PC viruses just because you have BootCamp - you also have to go out and purchase a copy of Windows, agree to is EULA (something about Microsoft not being liable for damage to your computer?), install it it, and run it.
So that's 299,993 more viruses for Windows PC's!
But what are the magnitude of those threats? What damage will be done if they are encountered?
Most Windows PC users run some sort of anti-virus scanner. I'm willing to bet that the vast majority of Mac PC's are running around unprotected. After all, why scan for viruses on an operating system that doesn't get viruses?
"300 000 to 7, last time I looked, is the threat-count Windows vs Mac OS X. Apple simply claim Macs cannot get infected by the 300 000 threats that plague Windows ... what is wrong with that?"
Because you can install Windows on a Mac and get access to all of those viruses. I think someone would be well within their rights to complain about false advertising if that were the case.
As Apple have changed their advertising however, there does not appear to be a problem.
Windows gets viruses, and Apples OSX gets viruses. A virus is just a piece of software code that is written to work on a specific software platform, not hardware.
The hardware in this case is completely irrelevant, since both MS and Apple write their OS kernels for the same god damn hardware.
Oh dear, frantic clicking of fanbois and Apple deniers alike. Calm down, it's not what you think.
That is, my Mac is free from iOS5 viruses.
For the rest I have taken great care to make it compatible with all OSX, Windows and even Linux malware by means of Virtualbox (I hate Bootcamp, because that means I can only get one type of malware at a time).
Yet, the machine still hasn't got any malware, because I do not execute applications I don't know (there is something to be said for the walled garden) also because I like to see file extensions, I don't visit odd websites and I keep up to date with the latest patches. The latter is a complete pain in the rear, whereas OSX hits the Net once every week and then very occasionally finds something to pick up, the Windows (XP) VM is unusable for half an hour if I have the temerity of not letting it work for a week because of all the OS patches and its own anti-virus update. The Linux Mint VM less so, that's more at OSX level of update overhead.
Oh, and I never bought the "virus free" crap and I have anti virus installed. Call me fickle, but I prefer hard facts and proof over marketing fiction (it's great fun to wind up fanatics in any camp asking them to prove their claim that the platform is virus free - it totally frazzles Linux users, for instance)..
Now, on balance this means all the platform living on this box are OK - because the same sanity applies to all. It's simple: if stick your appendage into dodgy places you're sure to catch something so don't. Apply common sense instead of believing any stupid marketing drivel - works every time..
By the way, anti-virus is an "after the event" measure - prevention is better. AV will not help you at all with zero day threats, and I have seen one remain unnoticed for over 2 weeks, despite me submitting it to some AV vendor contacts I have and getting it back 2 hours later with a note that I was right calling it a virus.
So there.
Please let's stop the silly "i" mania at the end.
From "dictionary dot com" which knows a bit about words:
[The plural is] Viruses. It is not viri, or (worse) virii. True, the word comes directly from Latin, but not all Latin words ending in -us have -i as their plural. Besides, viri is the Latin word for 'men' (plural of vir, 'man', the root of English virile). There is in fact no written attestation of a Latin plural of virus. The convention for forming the plural of Latin words in English is to use the Latin plural form, or, if Latin does not actually have a plural form for the word, to form the plural in the normal manner used for other English words. Virus is a second declension noun ending in -us. However, it is one of the few such nouns that has no plural in Latin. It occurs only in the singular. So, just as with ignoramus, one forms its English plural by appending -es.
The Register 
Biting the hand that feeds IT
Copyright. All rights reserved © 1998–2024
