“Continuing a non-story that will never die, Wired Magazine has an article about the threat of Mac OS X malware,” Carl Howe writes for SeekingAlpha.
“The whole Mac OS X malware story is one of those urban myths that just won’t die,” Howe writes. “For an ordinary consumer, it’s easy to think that since Mac OS X and Microsoft Windows both looks somewhat similar, that they must be similar underneath and exhibit similar vulnerabilities. Therefore, the reasoning goes, the difference in malware must just be due to market share differences.”
“The only problem is that it isn’t true. The two platforms have completely different business philosophies, architectures, and decisions behind them. And those differences matter when it comes to security,” Howe writes.
Howe explains, “Mac OS X remains a much tougher nut to crack for malware developers. Why? There are actually a lot of reasons, but I’ll stick with just my top three.”
Unlike Windows:
• Mac OS X users don’t run with administrator privileges
• Mac OS X has less spaghetti code
• Mac OS X mail doesn’t automatically run attachments
• Apple can actively manage and verify its hardware
MacDailyNews Note: Uh, Carl, that’s four reasons.
Howe continues, “Now I’m not saying that Apple has an invulnerable or even a ‘requires-an-MIT-Ph.D.-to-crack’ security system… But I think it’s important to distinguish between having two exploits on the roughly 50 million Mac OS X computers (the latest of which is actually a Trojan Horse, and not a virus) and the roughly 140,000 viruses extant for the hundreds of millions of Microsoft Windows computers worldwide. Two vulnerabilities don’t make an epidemic. And given that Mac OS X is a harder target to penetrate, I don’t expect those ratios to change dramatically any time soon.”
Much more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: It’s always welcome to see someone advocating putting things in perspective, but that’s not what AV software peddlers, WIndows PC box assemblers, and the rest of the leeches stuck to the Windows ecosystem want people to hear, Mr. Howe. Increased Mac sales always result in increased Anti-Mac FUD. The sheep must be kept in the Windows pen, no matter the cost to reputations, reality, productivity, sanity, etc. Far too many have far too much invested in Microsoft Windows for them to stand idly by and let it all slip away due to a vastly superior solution from Apple.