anti-virus for Macs

[rjfvillarosa]

Apple pushes anti-virus for Macs

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/7760344.stm

I hope I am not slamming the door after the horse has cleared off.

[shadowpr]

"Apple encourages the widespread use of multiple antivirus utilities so that virus programmers have more than one application to circumvent, thus making the whole virus writing process more difficult."

That seems wrong. Unless they just mean to have multiple programs for manual scans, but it doesn't read like that.

Sounds like they're scared that they will have to change some of their I'm a Mac commercials.

[Force Flow]

Originally Posted by shadowpr That seems wrong. Unless they just mean to have multiple programs for manual scans, but it doesn't read like that. Sounds like they're scared that they will have to change some of their I'm a Mac commercials.

To me, what it's saying is that they want to encourage multiple vendors to put out anti-virus software for the mac. Why? So that virus makers don't just have one product to focus on and potentially exploit.


In the PC world, there's Symantec/Norton, Nod32, trend micro, AVG, kaspersky, and a handful of others that I can't recall off the top of my head. Different scanning engines pick up different things. Some are better than others, and some are worse than others. but because there's a wide selection, virus makers focusing on exploiting a single AV product will have a limited impact because of the variety of AV software in use.



And yes, because of Apple's surge in popularity, a larger marketshare makes for a more tempting target for the foliks who write malware/viruses/trojans/etc. As a result, Apple can't tout "security by obscurity" image for much longer.

[Force Flow]

huh. Apparently, this is old news with minor updates:

http://gizmodo.com/5100996/false-ala...ndation-is-old

[Jester]

I have had a macbook for 3 years now. I have never had the need for any AV. My wifes school MADE her get Macafee Virex. It was horrible. I uninstalled it as soon as she graduated. AV programmers have not dealt with the mac for long enough and there for have cruddy software. I will not put any AV on my Macbook. The only reason I have it on my PC is there is just too much out there that I cant catch by being an intellegent user.

[Force Flow]

McAffe is terrible on any platform period.