Sophos: Mac invulnerability bubble to pop in 2008?

Alex Zaharov-Reutt
Sunday, 17 February 2008 10:19

Opinion and Analysis

The three possible answers, along with the percentage of respondents is as follows:

50% chose “Yes, but not as much as Windows”, 43% only chose “Yes”, while only a tiny 7% chose a flat out “No”.

Graham Cluley, senior technology consultant for Sophos, said that: "Although we have seen the first attempts by criminal gangs to make money through Mac OS X malware, the fact of that matter is that there is only a tiny number of viruses and Trojan horses for Apple Macs when compared to Windows PCs. It seems unlikely that the Mac virus problem will ever be as big as the Windows one”.

Cluley continued that: "Yes, the Macintosh malware threat is a concern - but it's important to put it in perspective. Sophos's podcast discusses the history and evolution of Macintosh malware, helping IT administrators better understand the problem and protect their
systems."

Sophos also points to their free “annual Security Threat Report” on their site, which they say “described how financially motivated hackers had targeted Apple Mac computers with malware for the first time”.

They also ask readers, in regard to their online poll, to “Please bear in mind that this poll is not scientific and is provided for information purposes only. Sophos makes no guarantees about the accuracy of the results other than that they reflect the choices of the users who participated”.

So, Windows machines still command the absolute lion’s share of viruses, Trojans, malware, spyware and other net nasties, and it’s 100% true that a self-spreading Mac virus is still firmly within the realms of impossibility.

But the rise of malware using ‘social engineering’ techniques to trick a Mac user into installing itself under the guise of a video codec or some other harmless sounding software is probably going to get a whole lot worse this year.

In Apple’s defense, they have worked hard in Mac OS X Leopard 10.5 to warn users running new software that what they are about to run has never been run on their computers before, hopefully warning users who might otherwise be caught unawares that they could well be about to install malware or some other nasty software.

But not everyone will understand the significance of the warning when it comes, which is just human nature. Buying a Mac doesn’t make you invulnerable, but it’s still a heck of a lot safer than any version of Windows!