Stephen Withers
Wednesday, 26 November 2008 03:03
Opinion and Analysis
Page 2 of 3
Despite previously playing down the malware issue in its advertising, Apple now seems to be recommending the use of antivirus software.
Here's what it says in a recently revised
support article:
"Apple encourages the widespread use of multiple antivirus utilities so that virus programmers have more than one application to circumvent, thus making the whole virus writing process more difficult."
The article goes on to list three commercial antivirus programs, Intego VirusBarrier X5, Symantec's Norton Anti-Virus 11 for Macintosh, and McAfee VirusScan for Mac.
To that list you could add Sophos Anti-Virus for Mac, ClamXav (a free derivative of the open source ClamAV; incidentally, the latter is part of Mac OS X Server), and the just-launched iAntiVirus from Symantec subsidiary PC Tools.
The change of heart was welcomed by at least one security vendor. "We can only applaud the fact that Apple has chosen to recognize that Macs face security risks and that they require protection," said an Intego spokesperson in the company's
blog.
Recent threats to Mac OS X have been variants of the RSPlug trojan which, in the guise of installing a video codec, changes the Mac's settings to use a malicious DNS server that may divert web requests to phishing sites or to bogus pages in order to generate advertising revenue.
What's new with RSPlug? See
page 3.
