Why is there Anti-Virus software for Mac??

IF macs don't get Viruses, then why would anyone buy antivirus software for the mac??

Just curious!

note; my one hundredth post

 

because as Macs get more and more popular, viruses will be written for them. The only reason Mac and Linux users don't get viruses is because those who make viruses want to hit the majority of users (read: windows).

 

I would like to think that its not just market share. if there were just as many security holes in os x as there were in windows, some jerk would write viruses for os x, right?

my intial thought was that the Unix underpinnings make it more difficult to write effective viruses for os x, but that has little to do with it. the desirability from the virus makers standpoint is low because of the limited penetration power. penetration power might just be enough to stop them.

Lets set up a situation with numbers just for sake of explanation.

Lets a virus maker wants to use email to spread a virus. Lets say, also, that he has the capability to send 10,000 emails before being stopped by his ISP or whatever. 10,000 emails. This virus works by sending itself out to contacts on your email account after you have been infected. A virus can only target windows or os x, but obviously not both. Lets also say that os x has 5% market share, and windows has 90%, both of which are pretty close. Lets say 1% of people will get the virus from the virus maker directly (it involves opening the attachment - you don't know who its from, but the message is enticing by design), and 10% will open up the email if they know who its from (now the email is enticing and seems familiar, you think you know it is from).
Also, lets say each person has 50 people on their contact list.

Thats the groundwork. These numbers are just pulled out of the air, but they will show the concept at work.

Windows Virus:

out of 10,000 emails, 90% (9,000 people) are targets and will receive the virus if they open the attachment. 1% do it, so 90 people are infected. Each person has 50 contacts, so the virus gets sent out to 4,500 people. 4,050 have windows and 405 people get infected in the second round of emails. Now 405 people send out the virus to 20,250 people, 18,225 of which are susceptible to the virus. 1,822 people get the virus on the third round. 8201 people get infected in the next round. Then 36,905 people on the fifth round. In five cycles of the virus, a windows virus maker just infected 47,000 people and the virus is spreading faster and faster. Hopefully virus companies will intervene and stop it before it gets out of hand. But this situation HAS ACTUALLY HAPPENED before and created mass pandemonium. (not these specific numbers, but there have been cases where virus growth is exponential to time and gets out of hand fast and sweeps across countries in a matter of hours)

Mac Virus:

out of 10,000 emails, 5% (500 people) are targets and will receive the virus they open the attachment. 1% do it, 5 people are infected. Each person has 50 contacts, so the virus gets sent out to 250 people. Of those 250 people, 13 people (rounding in favor of the virus) have a mac and 10% (about 1 person) will open the virus and get infected. That one person sends out the virus to 50 people, of which 3 people have mac os x. None of them open the attachment. The virus has been quarantined simply by its inability to penetrate the market. In total, with 10,000 emails, the virus maker has infected 19 people, and the virus has been stopped completely without any effort to intervene.

Ponder it.

 

very true, but market share is still a factor.

Yeah, ever notice that Windows are also the part of the house that burglers sneak in through?

 

thats actually my whole point. read carefully.

just for the sake of whatever, in my mock example you have to have 20% market share just to sustain a virus without it growing, but it will still spread without dying. Above 20% market share and it will grow faster and faster with time, and below 20% it will die out and have only a minimal impact.

there are other factors though. some people have anti virus, which can stop the virus (if and when the AV companies intervene). Maybe more people open the virus, maybe word gets out, maybe its on the news, which affects people's decisions about whether or not to open it. etc.

 

This may be true but obscurity is not an excuse

 

OK then what anti virus program should I get for my new MBP.....

 

*sigh*

please read this thread carefully.

 

Market share is not the only reason that there are fewer viruses on *nix systems like OS X and Linux. The system architecture has a lot to do with it. In a typical system, as long as you're not running as superuser, the virus will only affect your home folder and doesn't really have the opportunity to go beyond that. You never gave it administrator rights, so it can't affect your system files unless the virus maker is really clever (which a lot of Windows virus-makers these days aren't particularly clever, especially in a UNIX environment). But even if you do give it admin rights, let it infect your system and then send it to someone else, they then have to give it admin rights to screw up their system as well. Now, granted, this isn't quite as true in OS X since it's a more simplified system, but also keep in mind that OS X is also based on BSD, which is itself more secure than Linux.

Now, look, I'm not saying that it's impossible to get viruses on a UNIX system, cause that's not true. And if you believe you're never going to be able to get a virus in OS X or Linux, you need to think again; anything can happen. In reality, UNIX viruses actually tend to be worse than your standard "download lot's of pr0n ads from the net while you browse" Windows viruses, and can seriously screw up your system (and in the case of Linux can actually cripple your kernel since the kernel is open source). But it takes a pretty smart programmer to know these holes and find them, and then hope that it hasn't already been patched, and then know how to spread it.

Of course, market share does have some bearing on the issue. There are plenty more Windows users than anything else, so it just makes more sense. My point is that the fact that Windows is easier to attack isn't hurting either.

 

Anything will have virus, as long as a writer is willing to spend time making the destruction. Just like the human body, i can catch a flu virus anywhere, my friend who takes vitamin Cs won't catch it that easily.

Therefore even Mac, Symbian handphones, Linux etc have antivirus software.

 

Sorry, my firefox window crapped out on me and I only got the first couple of lines. Didn't get the whole post.

 

To answer apes' question, there's antivirus software because the AV companies want your unnecessary money. Currently there are no Mac OS X viruses in the wild so don't get antivirus for your Mac. It'll be a waste of money.

 

Agreed. If you must use something, get something free that you can scan with every once in a while. But don't waste your money on something that will sit in the background and hog resources.

 

My logic for having an antivirus is that even if there are few/no viruses for OS X, I have Boot Camp and I work with Windows too, so the antivirus serves to weed out Windows viruses they may not effect my OS X partition, but could spread to Windows. Besides, I think it's curteous to make sure when I'm sending files that I'm not infecting everyone else even if I am safe.

 

if a virus is designed to penetrate a windows environment, its not going to be able to do anything in os x. it can't magically affect your windows partition when you are running os x- thats not even factoring in the possibility that your windows partition is ntfs (which you cannot write to in os x). lets say the virus was an exe file. os x won't do anything with it. it cannot run exe files... end of story.

you should have antivirus for windows (running in the windows environment only) to protect you from windows viruses while running windows. worst case scenario that you get your windows partition infected, your os x partition will be fine because windows cannot READ or WRITE to hfs+ (your mac hard drive)

 

Those virus scanners are, as far as I know, mainly to not infect Windows computers by forwarding e-mails containing virusses or burning disks with virusses or something.

Can't find another reason, there is simply no serious virus for Mac OS X.

 

thats very much so true. i know of several AV programs that specifically search for windows viruses. keep in mind you would have to manually move the virus. it can't infect your system and send itself to all your contacts. you would have to physically forward a message to someone with the virus (which they would have to open and run) or burn a disk specifically with the virus program and hand it around.

 

I don't understand why everyone says there is NO virus present for Mac OS X. In fact, there have been a few found, but only one "true" virus. Despite this, I do agree that the damage created by such a virus created for Mac OS X has a much less destructive payload than Windows' viruses. I read an article when a virus creator admitted that coding a virus for Mac was much more difficult than coding one for Windows. I believe only 50 users have been infected, but like I mentioned, the damage done was minor.

To clarify my post:

http://www.sophos.com/pressoffice/news/articles/2006/02/macosxleap.html

 

i think the term used was that there are no viruses in the wild. in other words, you can't get that virus, even if you tried. its not available in the wild.

that makes sense, because of what i said before. apparently only 50 people got infected. if ichat was some sort of mac exlusive application that a lot of mac members were involved in, that would be one thing, but as it stands ichat is used primarily for the aim network (which again is like 90% PC based). A mac virus spreading like that cannot thrive on its own.

 

If you are sharing files or on a window server then you would be recommended to have a av for the mac/linux to scan for window's viruses. That way, you would not infect and/or spread viruses to your windows os either on: dual boot, virtualize, or server.

Even in most common scenario, you want to shared a picture you found on the internet and save the picture to e-mail to your windows-user friends. You won't be infected but your friends who are using windows would be if the pictures carry a virus (not likely for a picture to have a virus but you get the idea).

 

That was basically my point in my earlier post. Obviously a Windows virus could not operate in OS X, but an infected file can be forwarded by email, accessed from Windows using Boot Camp through MacDrive, accessed over a network share or physically transferred by passing around a USB flash drive. Maybe I'm paranoid or am just used to it from Windows, but having an antivirus helps me sleep better at night so there is that benefit too.

 

I have never understood this whole you should get an AV for OS X so you don't spread Windows viruses. For one, most of these scanners to my knowledge do not scan for Windows viruses. Second, why on earth would a virus email be forwarded out of your email? The way they are forwarded from PC to PC is through infection, but the Mac can't be infected by a Windows virus and therefore will not forward it unless you intentionally do it. Third, almost all of your mail is being scanned for Windows viruses anyway by your email provider.

Another problem is that even if/when a real OS X virus is loosed in the wild, the AV will not likely detect it anyway. For now any AV on the Mac is a waste of money and system resources.

 

Well, VirusBarrier has detected some Windows viruses and worms. True it library of Windows viruses probably isn't as comprehensive as say Kaspersky, but it's still better than nothing. I guess my main concern is transferring files via USB key that may need to be worked on by a variety of people so it's difficult to assume it's integrity. I'd be safe modifying it on Mac, but I'd like to prevent passing on a virus to the next person who edits the file if possible. The last thing I would want is to be blamed for giving someone a virus, even though it was already infected when I got it and it's illogical that a Windows virus could actually jump into the file when it's accessed in OS X.

 

the only way any os will be virus free is if it isnt subjected to the internet =P i mean thats the best way to protect yourself xD

 

I suggest saving your money for the time when a virus does hit OSX. When it gets to be a real problem, I'm sure the good AV companies like Eset and Kaspersky will enter the Mac market. It's probably better just to wait for them than to put up with AV software atm that you can't really compare anything against.

 

I think the best reason to run a anti-virus program on OS X is to clean/inspect files that other systems may run into.
If you ask most Unix/Linux freaks who also have windows systems, many run clam AV to help keep the network clean. And it's free, and from what I understand, is easier on resource hogging that running many AV programs in windows.

Now I read FFZero comments, and yeah, pretty much waht he started on

 

These days nothing is safe from viruses. There are people out there who try to ruin other's lives just for fun by writing them.

Macs can get viruses, but the likely-hood of getting nailed by one is extremely low. I run Clam AV just to be on the safe side, and turned on the Mac firewall for safe measure. Also, if you regularly download the OSX updates you'll be fine as well.

 

For those that say a Mac user should run an AV to keep from spreading a virus, could you explain how a Mac could 'pass on' a virus? Aside from it being part of an email attachment and you forwarding that on, I don't really see how else that is possible.