On Aug 11, 2004, at 4:50 PM, B Gardner wrote:
Aaron, may I borrow some more of your expertise? What would you recommend in the way of Virus software?
While I have not seemed to have a problem with my Mac, I do seem to see alot of emails that are carrying viruses around.
Sigh. THERE ARE NO MAC VIRUSES IN THE WILD. There may be a handful of old viruses floating about for OS 9, but in the years since OS X has been released NOT ONE SINGLE OS X VIRUS has emerged.
You don't need AV software. Just delete the virus-laden e-mails.
There are some folks who will argue that Mac users need to use AV software to protect hapless Windows users you may communicate with, but transmitting a virus like that requires a deliberate act. You can't just do it 'accidentally'.
Besides, I think of it as evolution in action. Sorry Windows folks, but I'm not going to be an enabler any more. You're too stupid to switch, you deserve the crap you get for running Windows.
(note, this rant is informed by by a recent infestation of viruses here on campus. All these allegedly intelligent sysadmins bemoaning about how this AV product or that AV product had failed to catch the latest threat, while the mac admins shake their heads in disbelief...HOW MANY TIMES does this have to happen before people realize that there *might* just be a problem with their sheep-like devotion to MS...I mean, they're like the old joke about the guy complaining to his doctor "It hurts when I do this!" and the doctor says "So stop doing that." Only in this joke, the guy says "Oh, no Doc, that can't be right, everybody is doing this!"
My mom had the answer for that one "So if Jimmy jumped off the roof, you would too?")
I've not seen a new Word or Excel macro virus released in over two years; the default settings of Word X and Excel X (and since Office 2000 on the Windows side) would prevent them from working.
Until (and if, this is a *big* if) there are ever Mac viruses (under OS X) all that AV software is, is a waste of money and computing resources.
I know Philip may charge in here with vague and OOOH SCARY warnings about how horridly insecure OS X is and we're just fooling ourselves if we believe that there isn't a horde of horrible things just waiting to happen to OS X...I say this is vastly overblown by folks with a vested interest in scaring people, like Intego.
I say I'll believe it when I see it happen.
An effective third party attack on OS X has yet to be demonstrated. Any exploit I've ever seen requires, at the very least, a local user account.
But it just ain't so. Out of the box OS X is the most secure consumer OS by a long long shot. Out of the box there isn't anything running to attack.
The only safer OS is OS 9.
If you wish to install AV software, by all means do so, but be aware that it's merely a security blanket; it doesn't actually *do* anything useful.
-- Bruce Johnson University of Arizona College of Phar macy Information Technology Group
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