Mac OS X virus free?

There’s an article about: “Don’t bug me: why Macs are still virus free” I read today.

“The real answer is UNIX, the foundation technology Mac OS X is based on” says Neal Costello.

While it is true that Unix systems have been designed with a very different approach, it does not mean that they are impenetrable.

The reason why we see less malware on Linux is because malware authors are money driven. If I was a bad guy and wanted to infect as many people as possible, I would write a virus for Windows. It would guarantee me the highest ROI.

Thinking that you are safe because you are running a Mac is making a big mistake. In fact, in most malware infections, the weakest link is the end user. That type of thinking will get you in big trouble when a fake codec will pop up and you blindly install it. A well-educated PC user will not fall for that.

Same for phishing scams, having a Mac does not protect you any better than having Windows. You click a link in your email to “update” your bank account. It turns out it’s a fake site and it just stole your credentials. Well, Mac OS X or not you have just been a victim of Identity Theft.

There is a lot of buzz about Bots and Botnets… You may be surprised, but they exist on the Mac as well:

Extract from the source code:

At the end of the day, you may want to choose whatever OS you wish but don’t believe everything you hear. It’s good for marketing to say “Macs have no viruses” because people are genuinely concerned with security… Remember when everybody was saying “don’t use IE, use Firefox”? Well, the number of exploits for Firefox rose significantly… Again, the bad guys will go where the money is. It may take them longer to bypass a UNIX system, but if it’s worth the effort, they will gladly do it.

Updated to add:

Neal Costello from makemineamac.info, responded to my post:

Interesting to see the shift from “Virus free” to “relatively low number of exploits”

I’ve had quite a few people tell me “you don’t have a Mac product so why the heck do you bother talking about Mac threats?”. Well, to that my answer is that I blog about security threats. They could be on your PSP, iPhone, Atari… doesn’t matter!

Jerome Segura