Every successful exploit of Mac OS X has required either physical access to the Mac in question or social engineering to fool the Mac user into installing the malware themselves. The rare user has installed the trojan even after OS X warned them not to.

Anti-virus software cannot look for nonexistent viruses . Anti-virus software cannot magically raise your IQ by enough points so that you see through the social engineering. Anti-virus software can only second OS X’s trojan warning. Don’t click on that, it’s a program, stupid!

Apple and, by association, smug Mac users are such big targets that it boggles the mind that no one has come up with a self propagating virus for Mac OS X. Just maybe it’s a very hard task to accomplish and the few people who would be capable of doing such a thing are too busy writing Mac software.

As far as Mac security, I had a discussion just this morning with a coworker who is in IT at my company. We were discussing VPN connections, and at the mention of me having a Mac, he immediately said that Macs were not any safer than PCs. And of course he used the tired old argument that the only reason Macs don’t have more viruses is because the user base is so small that hackers don’t care. I respectfully disagreed, but couldn’t change his mind, of course.

Remind him that Apple is now the number three PC company in the U.S., and that’s surely a status significant enough to mean the user base is sufficient to attract virus writers.

Apple’s sales have grown from roughly 800,000 per quarter to over three times that number in the span of a few years, and while there are still proofs of concept, limited outbreaks, and the usual round of security fixes by Apple, the situation hasn’t changed.

His argument is without a factual basis.

Peace,
Gene

As far as Mac security, I had a discussion just this morning with a coworker who is in IT at my company. We were discussing VPN connections, and at the mention of me having a Mac, he immediately said that Macs were not any safer than PCs. And of course he used the tired old argument that the only reason Macs don’t have more viruses is because the user base is so small that hackers don’t care. I respectfully disagreed, but couldn’t change his mind, of course.