News of the Flashback trojan flooded the pipes earlier this month with headlines about how Macs are “no longer safe,” and generally scaring the bejeezus out of Mac users everywhere. That perfect illusion of Apple, which has always been exalted by users for creating products practically immune to viruses, was suddenly shattered. And rightfully so, as the virus had affected 600,000 people, roughly 1% of Mac users.
Even more frightening was the breakout of a newer trojan the other day. Sabpab, also referred to as SabPub, is a still-active virus that is spread through Java vulnerability (much like Flashback) and Word documents -- an old school method of attack that most users don’t see coming.
So why all the new viruses? Haven’t Macs always been considered the safer alternative to PCs? At least that’s what we’ve been programmed to believe since the days of the “I’m a Mac” advertisements. Yet for the first time on a wide-scale level, Apple’s security is being questioned.
But before you get all riled up, consider a few things. Technically, Mac products are no safer than PCs; up until recently, Macs have been more protected by attacks simply due to the fact that PCs had more users and therefore hackers could gain more from attacking a larger population. However, as the population of Mac users has slowly grown, attacks have likewise begun to increase. The bit that makes this all okay: within weeks of a virus taking hold, Apple releases updates to eradicate all traces of the trojan.
It didn’t take long for Apple to strike down Flashback, the largest virus to ever affect Mac users. The same held true with last year’s MACDefender and will hold true again with Sabpab. It’s also important to note that while Mac users tout the invulnerability of Apple, Apple itself acknowledges its flaws in order to help consumers prepare and defend themselves. Not only does Apple have a support community ready to help users individually fix MacBook ailments, but they also offer features that help protect against an infection—it is simply that more often than not, users don't switch it on. In the end, Apple is so reliable that this is why the bad guys don’t bother too often with mass attempts at trojan'ing Apple.
So what should we expect? Certainly trojans will come and go, running rampant through OSX software, but Apple also won’t fail to deliver lightning fast solutions on its end.
TrevorM
April 21, 2012 at 4:04pm
"Macs have been more protected by attacks simply due to the fact that PCs had more users and therefore hackers could gain more from attacking a larger population."
I've heard this argument for years. This is why I disagree with it: there have been lots of college kids attending MIT, RIT, the big tech schools, etc. staying up nights trying to figure out a way to run a real virus through a Mac system. IF they could do it, they would become instantly famous. They'd get a huge salary at Apple, or McAfee. Someone will figure out how to hack the Mac OS X operating system eventually, but I'm not going to be overly concerned until it actually happens.
vishal.chaudhary
April 20, 2012 at 2:39am
By Installing a trusted Mac anti-virus utility we can at least assure that no threat including the upcoming new ones can do harm to our Mac drive and data. I am sure these viruses can become a serious threat to data and information may lead to its loss. I think user must take proper back up like making an image of the drive and saving it on the other, a third party utility drive clone would do this task for sure.
hourglass
April 19, 2012 at 11:33am
The virus protection is inbuilt. You can turn it on and off at will in your settings.
iMac.27
April 18, 2012 at 6:09pm
"Apple have a support community ready to help users individually fix MacBook ailments, but they also build anti-virus software—it is simply that more often than not, users choose not to install it."
What Anti-virus does apple make? I have never seen an option to install an anti-virus from Apple.
I know of Firewall and some Vault encryption, that's it.
ilikeimac
April 19, 2012 at 3:37pm
Ha ha, looks like the article was updated to replace "they also build anti-virus software" with "they also offer features that help protect against an infection".
And despite what the article and 'hourglass' say, you can't turn off the download scanning feature, you can only turn off whether the safe download list is updated daily, and I'm pretty sure that's on by default. Other settings are probably insecure by default though, especially on older versions of OS X.
Anywho, that's more attention than this link- and debate-bait deserves.
