Mysterious Mac Malware Has Infected Victims for Years • Hacker News Board

Re: Mysterious Mac Malware Has Infected Victims for Years

#61

Post by valine » Mon, Jul 24, 2017, 8:50 PM UTC

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…

Pegasus was used by governments to target specific individuals. If you're being targeted by governments I would agree you're out of luck even on iOS.

Re: Mysterious Mac Malware Has Infected Victims for Years

#62

Post by StillBored » Mon, Jul 24, 2017, 8:51 PM UTC

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…

There is plenty of iOS malware, its just burred behind a "free" app which appears to be a simplistic game or whatever..

Re: Mysterious Mac Malware Has Infected Victims for Years

#63

Post by Karunamon » Mon, Jul 24, 2017, 8:51 PM UTC

80211 wrote: post #54

jmull wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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/

Nothing on that site makes the claim that Apple software is immune from malware. They claim that it's "secure", but that's relative anyways. All of the real iOS malware I know of abuses either jailbroken devices or enterprise provisionings. The standard infection case of "ran something you shouldn't have" or drive by downloading is a lot harder to pull off there.

Re: Mysterious Mac Malware Has Infected Victims for Years

#64

Post by djrogers » Mon, Jul 24, 2017, 9:11 PM UTC

StillBored wrote: post #62

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…

There is plenty of iOS malware, its just burred behind a "free" app which appears to be a simplistic game or whatever..

Citation? AFAIK the iOS sandbox has not been broken on un-jailbroken iOS devices, so at worst you're getting a garbage app that doesn't do what it promises.

I've never seen nor heard of any actual malware outbreak from a non-jailbroken app.

Re: Mysterious Mac Malware Has Infected Victims for Years

#65

Post by snarfy » Mon, Jul 24, 2017, 9:27 PM UTC

They were surprised to find malware that wasn't written by a nation-state, which is kind of depressing.

Re: Mysterious Mac Malware Has Infected Victims for Years

#66

Post by SomeStupidPoint » Mon, Jul 24, 2017, 9:36 PM UTC

80211 wrote: post #52

mikejmoffitt wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I'm pretty sure "assault rifle" [0] is a reasonably well-defined term and you mean "assault weapon" [1] in your post.

Pointing out that "assault weapon" is meaningless is trying to combat emotive, irrational legislation based on conflating "assault weapon" with "assault rifle" because most people don't understand the difference (and one of the terms was chosen to be intentionally confusing).

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assault_rifle

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assault_weapon

Re: Mysterious Mac Malware Has Infected Victims for Years

#67

Post by tracker1 » Mon, Jul 24, 2017, 9:41 PM UTC

80211 wrote: post #50

taurath wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would guess many 20-somethings have recommended a mac to their parents with this as one of the bullet points. At a time, it was more or less true - when dropping a virus on your windows PC was as easy as loading a malicious activex website, macs just didn't even have it. Not to say macs weren't vulnerable, but the attack surface was lower and the cost/benefit to people trying to bot-net your mom's Mac was higher th…

I'm a 50-something and my Mom with her Mac manages to get infected with browser-based malware. And she's pretty careful. But sometimes those "update" notifications look real to her.

I used to have to clear out malware remotely from one of my grandmother's computers about twice a year, for several years.. I was so happy when it finally died, bought her a chromebook, which she was very happy with.

Chromebooks are probably the single best option for a computer with a keyboard. I wish the chrometops were a bit more compelling, as I'd probably switch my other grandmother (ubuntu 16.04) over. She has one program she plays a lot (since 1996) which runs under WINE.

Re: Mysterious Mac Malware Has Infected Victims for Years

#68

Post by 1ris » Mon, Jul 24, 2017, 9:46 PM UTC

djrogers wrote: post #64

StillBored wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is plenty of iOS malware, its just burred behind a "free" app which appears to be a simplistic game or whatever..

Citation? AFAIK the iOS sandbox has not been broken on un-jailbroken iOS devices, so at worst you're getting a garbage app that doesn't do what it promises. I've never seen nor heard of any actual malware outbreak from a non-jailbroken app.

I know next to nothing about iOS, so: Why can't the (usually public) jailbrake-exploit or another, similar potent (and probably quite expensive) be launched from inside the app? Sure, it has to be hidden to get into the store, but that looks very easy compared to finding the actually jail break. One just has to hide a arbitrary code execution vuln in the code of the app somewhere.

So, every apps seems to be an attack sureface.

Re: Mysterious Mac Malware Has Infected Victims for Years

#69

Post by tensor » Mon, Jul 24, 2017, 9:48 PM UTC

kuschku wrote: post #35

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…

Apple literally had that in their ads.

You need to remember that when those ads aired Windows still ran everything as root and had genuine "viruses", not trojans or other malware. But a virus as in the definition of the term. That Macs and Linux had a sane security model really did make them essentially "immune to viruses" in a very real way.

Today, a genuine virus is a rare thing, most malware are trojans. But back then viruses were the dominant form of malware. It's quite unfair to criticize people claiming Macs don't get "viruses" by changing the context on them to include all malware. That's not the claim people made.

Re: Mysterious Mac Malware Has Infected Victims for Years

#70

Post by pwython » Mon, Jul 24, 2017, 9:52 PM UTC

mediocrejoker wrote: post #24

As someone new to the Mac ecosystem, is it standard practice to run an antivirus as it is on Windows? I have used various Linux systems as my daily web browsing machine for years without feeling the need to install any third-party antivirus.

I was a Windows user for 10 years. Now a Mac user for 11 years. Haven't needed any sort of antivirus yet. Just thinking back to my time with Windows makes me chuckle, when I had an arsenal of virus scanners, startup disablers, and registry cleaners on hand.