Davey Winder
Thursday, 24 July 2008 20:26
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Graham Cluley, senior technology consultant at security
vendor Sophos, told The Times that "It's still a drop in the ocean
compared to Windows vulnerabilities" but stressed that these Mac
vulnerabilities have "become more sophisticated and more criminally
minded, rather than just proof of concept."
Having known Graham for many years, and being
very respectful of his opinion on matters security related, I have to
take his concerns seriously. He suggests that the Mac user base will
end up "becoming polluted by some of the same people who have been
infected time and time again in the Windows environment" and states
that it's mainly "the same people who buy a computer primarily to
download porn and visit file-sharing sites."
Cluley does, of course, have a point. Although I remain to be convinced
of how accurate it will actually turn out to be given the passage of
time. After all, Macs have traditionally appealed to an audience of
computer users who are less interested in the technology and more in
the ability to 'just do it' if you will excuse the mixed branding
message.
I don't agree that hackers will see this community of Mac users as
being a soft target any more in the future than they do already. While
the user base may not be anywhere near as large as that of Windows
users, there are enough Mac users already for the malware gangs to have
taken it seriously as a potential cash cow.
Yet can any reader out there, hand on heart, say that their Mac has been
infected successfully; that they have lost data as a result; that their
computing resources have been compromised or identity stolen courtesy
of some Mac malware?
My suspicion is that it has gone very quiet indeed. If it were easy it
would have happened already, after all the Mac is not an idiot-user
free zone. Sorry to burst any fanboy bubbles out there.
So are Macs invulnerable to malware infection? Read on for some sound security advice...
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