“A report by Agence Presse-France from this year’s DefCon hacker convention in Las Vegas centered on comments from security analyst Cameron Hotchkies. Hotchkies, who works with Zero Day Initiative to find and report security vulnerabilities in Apple software, gave a talk on Mac OS X hacking this past Saturday to a packed room. ‘There are a lot more people getting into it and really getting their hands dirty,’ he told AFP. ‘I’ve been seeing a lot of reverse engineering on the Apple platform,'” Chris Foresman reports for Ars Technica.
“The article goes on to ‘explain’ that an increase in Windows ports and iPhone jailbreaks are evidence that users should start to be worried about hackers and malware,” Foresman reports. “The truth is that increased scrutiny could lead hackers to target Mac OS X, but users jailbreaking an iPhone or a Windows developer porting poorly-written code to Mac OS X isn’t going to lead to rampant malware problems overnight. Users jailbreak iPhones to add software capabilities that aren’t approved by Apple; a bad Windows port is not likely to sell in very high numbers on a Mac.”
Full article, which also rightly reminds readers to be wary of social engineering (phishing and trojans), here.
MacDailyNews Take: Somehow this is “news” yet again, this time to Agence Presse-France. The same “report” has been published quarterly, at least, for the last half a decade. Yet, somehow, we Mac users manage to survive and surf the Web unimpeded on our Macs in the face of all of these “reports.”
In the full Agence Presse-France article, Glen Chapman reports, “Hackers have historically focused devious efforts on computers using Windows operating systems because the Microsoft software has more than 90 percent of the global market, promising evil-doers a wealth of targets. Macintosh computers have been gaining market share and catching the interest of hackers.”
That the Mac is secure via obscurity is a myth. Why, if obscurity means security, in April 2007 was there a virus for iPods running Linux (a few thousand devices total, at most, in all the world), but there are no viruses for the 30 million or so Mac OS X computers that are currently online? Hello? Bueller?
Uh, oh – logic is certainly not what AV software peddlers, Windows PC box assemblers, and the rest of the leeches stuck to the Windows ecosystem want people to hear. Fear is what they’re after. Increased Mac sales always result in increased anti-Mac FUD. It’s as sure as death and taxes. 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. But slip away it does nonetheless.
The idea that Windows’ morass of security woes exists because more people use Windows and that Macs have no security problems because fewer people use Macs, is simply not true. By design, Mac OS X is simply more secure than Windows. Period. For reference and reasons why Mac OS X is more secure than Windows, read The New York Times’ David Pogue’s mea culpa on the subject of the “Mac Security Via Obscurity” myth here.
“Security via Obscurity” is a defense mechanism for the delusional and also tool for Microsoft apologists and/or those who profit from Windows to keep the sheep in the pen. 30 million Mac OS X installs is not “obscure” at all, but seven (7) years of Mac users surfing the ‘Net unimpeded certainly is “secure.” Besides social engineering scams (phishing, trojans; no OS can instill common sense) the only thing by which Mac users are really affected are large swaths of compromised Windows machines slowing down the ‘Net with spam and nefarious botnet traffic targeted at exploiting even more insecure Windows boxes. Get a Mac.
Running the ridiculously resource-hogging antivirus/antimalware software on a Windows PC _is_ an issue! All that stuff (and Windows’ own issues after being installed and used for awhile) drags my whole Windows PC down dramatically. I don’t use the thing anymore. Yet OS X installed on my PowerBook after 4 years with _no_ wipe cleans (just upgrades to each new OS X version) and it still runs as fast and smooth as the day I got it. ]
Don’t knock it ’til you’ve tried it (for _four_ years!) Then you’ll wonder why you ever put up with all those “non issues”!
“Running the ridiculously resource-hogging antivirus/antimalware software on a Windows PC _is_ an issue!”
Sure it is, Sure. Right now my Antivirus is using about 0% of CPU, about the same amount of resource a Mac commits to the job. I guess when I hit the Submit button it’s probably going to kick into “Hog Mode” and slow down page reloading by a couple of thousandths of a second.
So, Mac users are vulnerable, are hit regularly by viruses and should be running an anti-virus product. Right?
Where’s your proof on how many regular, non-hacking Mac users running OS X have been affected by malware?
I just checked my Windows system looking for how much CPU my antivirus software was using and found that a process called the System Idle Process is sucking up all my CPU.
This thing just seems to use about 99% of available resources in the system all the time. Even at peak times, real processes are getting to use about 5% of the system capability at best.
But this piece of malware seems to be so strongly hooked into the operating system, I just can’t seem to kill it.
How do I kill the System Idle Process and get back all that CPU for useful tasks?
Please help me. A Panicked Fanboy.
“and we can all make uneducated guesses like Nick has.”
Yes, you obviously can.
I found your website. Nice work.
http://osxvirus.com/
Seriously this is a big problem. I need to get all that CPU back from the System Idle process to run my Antivirus software properly.
Nick Fury, surely you know how to remove the System Idle Process and get all My CPU back so I can use it to run Antivirus software?
Please help.
“I just checked my Windows system looking for how much CPU my antivirus software was using and found that a process called the System Idle Process is sucking up all my CPU.”
Here you go:
http://store.apple.com/us
“Here you go:”
But my friend just looked at his Mac and it’s infected with an Idle Process too! And that’s also using most of the CPU on his Mac. So much for no Mac Malware! You guys are obviously deluded. I bet all your Macs are infected with the Idle process malware! I bet it’s sucking up most of the CPU on all your systems!
Can you help my friend to remove the Mac Idle Process malware?
We checked some more systems, both Macs and PCs and this Idle Process malware is just everywhere! And always it’s using at least 95% of the CPU.
It’s amazing anyone has any CPU left to run Antivirus software.
Please Please Help Us with how to remove it.
We started looking further and EVERY PC and EVERY MAC we find is infected by this Idle Process. And many of them are running Antivirus software. But obviously the Idle Process is just sucking up CPU so that the Antivirus software can’t get the time it needs to run and be effective.
Most Mac owners tell me Antivirus software needs at least 50% of the CPU power of a machine to work. And on every machine we look at, it’s not getting anywhere near that because the Idle Process is using almost all available CPU.
Please HOW do we get rid of it?
@derekcurrie
Nice work. I’ve bookmarked this thread for later protection against trolls.
One other thing no one seemed to mention here is that the Mac community actually CARES if there’s malware and responds to it immediately (even if Apple sometimes lags behind), unlike the Windows world which shrugs and says, “Meh, just another virus/trojan/keylogger,” and goes about its business of restoring its hard drive or whatever. Read “Real Numbers'” post above for proof.
Oh, and I’m now in my fifth year of surfing the net using Mac OS X with no anti-malware software and waiting to need some.
Still waiting.
“Still waiting.”
Have you checked your system for the Idle Process? You may already have malware and not even know it.
Amazingly enough, there are so many posts pretending Mac OSX is “as permeable as windose if a hacker puts his fingers on”… yet no virus on OSX…
Hum!
So why can’t some people understand that there are hackers contests, rallies, competitions happening since YEARS in the hope of cracking OSX (amd Mac OS before that)… with still no damn “good results”!
Funny how a brain can filter what it wants to catch and what not!!!
“hackers contests, rallies, competitions “
In the published contests the Mac was hacked within minutes.
Nobody in their right mind puts up a Mac as a “Keep it if you can hack it” prize any more unless they’re prepared to regard it as a marketing expense. They might as well just put a stack of bills on the table with the words “Free, please take some”.
Drooler said, “. . . the Mac was hacked within minutes,” which is obviously either a deliberate lie or more delusional blather from a desperate mental patient.
Charlie Miller stated, “We sat down about three weeks ago and decided we wanted to throw our hats into the ring. It took us a couple of days to find something, then the rest of the week to work up an exploit and test it. It took us maybe a week altogether”.
You should have stopped pushing on the Q-Tip when you felt resistance.
Wow, a whole week? Macs are really secure then.
You know people can come to those contests with pre-prepared hacks, right?
With over two hundred major holes last year, all big enough to drive a truck through, Mac OS X is in no way secure.
Stop all this talk of Macs being more secure than Windows. It’s clear by now it has more holes but just gets hacked less.
I know only Nick Fury can save us from the Mac Idle Process, please Nick, return and tell us how we get rid of this malware.
They might as well just put a stack of bills on the table with the words “Free, please take some”.
That’s hardly fair, If they put the money in a paper bag it’d be harder to open up than Mac OS X.
http://www.roughlydrafted.com/2008/03/29/mac-shot-first-10-reasons-why-cansecwest-targets-apple/
Nick Fury: Yes, finally. I would like to return your quote
unquote, Ultimate Belt.
Storekeeper: I see, do you have a receipt, quote unquote,
sir?
Nick Fury: I do not have a receipt, I won it as a door
prize at the Star Trek convention, although
I find their choice of prize highly illogical
as the average Trekker has no use for a
medium-sized belt.
Storekeeper: Whoa, whoa. A fat, sarcastic Star Trek fan. You
must be a devil with the ladies.
Nick Fury: Hey, I… Huh… Tha… Oh…
Storekeeper: Gee, I hate to let you down Casanova, but uh, no
receipt, no return.
Bart: I’ll give you four bucks for it.
Nick Fury: Very well. I must hurry back to my comic book
store, where I dispense the insults rather than
absorb them.
Cool. I struck a nerve with someone who is easily rattled. But <u>way</u> too easy.
More from the Idiot Savant sans Savant? See the boiling babies discussion above to understand Eran’s credibility outside the fanboy world.
“Cool. I struck a nerve with someone who is easily rattled”
Yes, another victory for the Nickster.
“Cool. I struck a nerve with someone who is easily rattled. But way too easy.”
Such a great in character response. That’s just what Comic Book Guy would have said. Keep the laughs coming Nick.