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Mysterious Mac Malware Has Infected Victims for Years

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Re: Mysterious Mac Malware Has Infected Victims for Years

#51

Post by Chaebixi »

valine wrote: post #45
Semaphor wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My experience with tech illiterate people is that they think they can't get viruses on Mac or iOS. Viruses are a Windows-only thing in their minds.

You can't get viruses on iOS unless you're jailbroken - Apple's walled garden pretty much guarantees that. Even jailbreaking is insanely difficult with the newest versions of iOS. There is no public jailbreak of the current version of iOS, or the version before that.

> You can't get viruses on iOS unless you're jailbroken - Apple's walled garden pretty much guarantees that.

No. Apple can't guarantee their software is secure, so their walled garden doesn't guarantee anything like what you say.

Re: Mysterious Mac Malware Has Infected Victims for Years

#52

Post by 80211 »

mikejmoffitt wrote: post #38
coldtea wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It was presently, and it's easy much happening now either. All these "viruses", or 99% of them, are just trojans.

That doesn't really matter, as to the layperson virus often is a general catch-all term for malware.

Right. The Mac Zealots will say "These aren't viruses! They're unwanted programs purposefully installed by the user who thought he was updating Acrobat." But it's like a 2nd amendment advocate trying to win an argument by pointing out that word "Assault Rifle" is meaningless. It may be true, but it's not a way to argue.

Re: Mysterious Mac Malware Has Infected Victims for Years

#53

Post by 80211 »

digi_owl wrote: post #18
epistasis wrote: post #14

>the widespread belief that they are virus-free, Macs aren't immune from invasive and dangerous malware. This is an area where it's really hard to extrapolate from my personal experience to the entire population, but is this really an accurate statement of many people's beliefs? I think what people actually think is that the chances are much lower of encountering malware in the wild on a Mac. In support of that, havi…

I think it is a holdover from the early Mac days, where a large part of the base OS was in ROM. Thus a simple reboot would clear out any infection. That, and over time the lack of a general market presence, is likely what lead to the belief (never mind that Apple pushed the message with their I'm a Mac ads).

The early mac days when there was no hard-disk, maybe. But if you inserted another floppy when the virus was in-memory, it would spread!

Re: Mysterious Mac Malware Has Infected Victims for Years

#54

Post by 80211 »

jmull wrote: post #43
kuschku wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple literally had that in their ads.

Yes, but a decade or more ago. The security landscape and perceptions around it have changed. Also, back then the difference between MacOS and Windows was pretty stark so this was a valid marketing point. Not that the ads didn't oversell it, of course.

Wrong. They still do:

https://www.apple.com/business/products-platform/

Re: Mysterious Mac Malware Has Infected Victims for Years

#55

Post by valine »

Chaebixi wrote: post #51
valine wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can't get viruses on iOS unless you're jailbroken - Apple's walled garden pretty much guarantees that. Even jailbreaking is insanely difficult with the newest versions of iOS. There is no public jailbreak of the current version of iOS, or the version before that.

> You can't get viruses on iOS unless you're jailbroken - Apple's walled garden pretty much guarantees that. No. Apple can't guarantee their software is secure, so their walled garden doesn't guarantee anything like what you say.

For all practical purposes its true. There has never been a major malware outbreak on iOS, and iOS has never been more secure than it is now.

A while back Apple started pulling anti-virus apps from the app store presumably because they aren't needed: https://9to5mac.com/2015/03/19/apple-app-store-antivirus/. For contrast here is Microsoft's official article on protecting your PC from viruses: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/17228/windows-prote...

In addition, about 80% of iPhones in use are running the latest version of iOS. Apple can patch exploits and have the majority of iPhones secured in a short amount of time. iOS is unique in that respect, and that is just one mitigating factor that makes iOS malware very implausible.

Re: Mysterious Mac Malware Has Infected Victims for Years

#56

Post by draw_down »

epistasis wrote: post #14

>the widespread belief that they are virus-free, Macs aren't immune from invasive and dangerous malware. This is an area where it's really hard to extrapolate from my personal experience to the entire population, but is this really an accurate statement of many people's beliefs? I think what people actually think is that the chances are much lower of encountering malware in the wild on a Mac. In support of that, havi…

It doesn't matter, tech journos are in love with the narrative of "Mac users think they're better than the rest of us, but they're not!"

Re: Mysterious Mac Malware Has Infected Victims for Years

#57

Post by Chaebixi »

valine wrote: post #55
Chaebixi wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You can't get viruses on iOS unless you're jailbroken - Apple's walled garden pretty much guarantees that. No. Apple can't guarantee their software is secure, so their walled garden doesn't guarantee anything like what you say.

For all practical purposes its true. There has never been a major malware outbreak on iOS, and iOS has never been more secure than it is now. A while back Apple started pulling anti-virus apps from the app store presumably because they aren't needed: https://9to5mac.com/2015/03/19/apple-app-store-antivirus/ . For contrast here is Microsoft's official article on protecting your PC from viruses: https://support.microso…

That's just marketing hype mixed with a little bit of goalpost moving. "Has never been more secure than it is now" != secure.

> A while back Apple started pulling anti-virus apps from the app store presumably because they aren't needed.

I think you presume too much. An effective antivirus program cannot run in a sandbox that isolates it from other processes. If Apple pulled 3rd party antivirus apps, I bet it was because they could not both work as advertised and simultaneously obey the sandbox, not because they "aren't needed" (presumably because the platform is "secure").

As for your original statement:

>> You can't get viruses on iOS unless you're jailbroken - Apple's walled garden pretty much guarantees that.

Here's a counterexample: https://www.kaspersky.com/blog/pegasus-spyware/14604/

Re: Mysterious Mac Malware Has Infected Victims for Years

#59

Post by gpvos »

amelius wrote: post #39
jmull wrote: post #34

> ...despite the widespread belief that they are virus-free, Macs aren't immune from invasive and dangerous malware. I keep hearing this, but I never see evidence of these people. Is there a widespread belief that there's a widespread belief that Macs are immune from malware, despite few people who actually think this? Well, I'm sure such people exist, but there don't seem to be many, even on sites like macrumors and…

By now Windows also has a much stronger security model. So I'd say that the chances of anything happening would theoretically be about equal in Linux, Windows and Mac. But you'd have to take popularity into account, and since the Mac has become more popular, I'd guess they are a victim more often.

As long as Windows still tries to hide file extensions, the rest of its security barely matters. And in what way would its security model be better than MacOS or Linux? I'd say they are about the same nowadays.

Re: Mysterious Mac Malware Has Infected Victims for Years

#60

Post by [deleted] »

Chaebixi wrote: post #57
valine wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For all practical purposes its true. There has never been a major malware outbreak on iOS, and iOS has never been more secure than it is now. A while back Apple started pulling anti-virus apps from the app store presumably because they aren't needed: https://9to5mac.com/2015/03/19/apple-app-store-antivirus/ . For contrast here is Microsoft's official article on protecting your PC from viruses: https://support.microso…

That's just marketing hype mixed with a little bit of goalpost moving. "Has never been more secure than it is now" != secure. > A while back Apple started pulling anti-virus apps from the app store presumably because they aren't needed. I think you presume too much. An effective antivirus program cannot run in a sandbox that isolates it from other processes. If Apple pulled 3rd party antivirus apps, I bet it was beca…

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