I visited an Apple Store near me last night and asked about AV/AS for the Mac and he replied with chagrin that av/as software is a waste of money on a mac and proceeded to tell me that in the past 10-20 yrs maybe about 5 bad trojans were found, and even then the most damage that was done was because the user unknowingly let it run.
I know a little bit about security philosophy and his response didn't sit well with me; I know there have been a lot less reported attacks on macs than on windows machines, but to me, the operative word is reported , meaning who knows what else is out there that may not be getting caught since hardly anyone uses a scanner for a mac machine. My thinking is as more folks buy macs, and as Apple's market continues to climb, malware writers will start to target mac users more. Does this make sense to anyone? In case you are thinking of the "the problem lies between your keyboard and your chair" syndrome, my surfing/computing behavior doesn't take me to the dark corners of the Internet. A mac friend of mine pointed out that unlike windows, which will execute without windows catching the process to alert the user that something is trying to run, "Are you sure you want to allow xyz to run", is something a mac would do, in which a user (ultimately responsible) may, or may not allow it. The argument of people's skill level aside, I replied to him that malware writers may one day find a way around this built-in mac check tool (if they haven't already) that will allow malware to run unhindered. In that respect, its probably better to be safe than sorry.
Any comments?
Philip
