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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

#101

Post by [deleted] »

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…

[deleted]

Re: Mysterious Mac Malware Has Infected Victims for Years

#102

Post by wnevets »

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…

>but is this really an accurate statement of many people's beliefs?

yes. Those on hacker news may understand its not true but non-techies say it all the time ever since apple ran those I'm a pc tv spots

Re: Mysterious Mac Malware Has Infected Victims for Years

#103

Post by [deleted] »

NelsonMinar wrote: post #49
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…

People think Macs are virus-free because Apple spent years telling them were. Example ad, with John Hodgman as the Windows guy with a virus. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M3Z386vXrt4

[deleted]

Re: Mysterious Mac Malware Has Infected Victims for Years

#104

Post by kalleboo »

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.

Nobody can guarantee their software is secure (secure software doesn't exist), but the cash value of a sandbox escape/jailbreak of iOS on the black market (or probably even through Apple's bug bounty) far exceeds the value that would be generated from some adware or cryptolocker scam all but guarantees that you won't see any widespread malware.

Re: Mysterious Mac Malware Has Infected Victims for Years

#105

Post by kalleboo »

coldtea wrote: post #29
tedunangst wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's been a few years, but the "I'm a Mac and I'm a PC" ad series talked up virus immunity quite a bit. I suppose one could argue that "don't get malware" was narrowly accurate in the sense that it wasn't presently happening, but there was a strong suggestion of "can't get malware" too.

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

Aren't most "viruses" for Windows also just people opening attachments or installing porn site video codecs they shouldn't be?

Re: Mysterious Mac Malware Has Infected Victims for Years

#106

Post by 13of40 »

coldtea wrote: post #85
13of40 wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Mac OS 7/8 etc had even lower market share than today's Macs have, and it had tons of viruses That's not a valid comparison. When Mac OS 7/8 was mainstream, it was common to get software via a floppy disk that had already been in 10 other machines or from a fly-by-night BBS. Nowadays software distribution is far less peer-to-peer, and it's much more difficult for simple viruses to move from machine to machine. > ma…

> That's not a valid comparison. When Mac OS 7/8 was mainstream, it was common to get software via a floppy disk that had already been in 10 other machines or from a fly-by-night BBS. Nowadays software distribution is far less peer-to-peer, and it's much more difficult for simple viruses to move from machine to machine. That doesn't make sense. The software that back in the day would be in a disk that had "already be…

> That's not a valid comparison.

> simple viruses

Read these words again. Regardless of whether there were tons of viruses on MacOS back in 1997, there's no way it's valid to hold up your thumb, squint, and say the current situation is better or worse. The malware on MacOS 8 was almost exclusively viruses made by hobbyists which self-propagated through channels that no longer exist. There were no command and control servers, strong encryption, muti-stage deployments over the web, etc. Modern malware is organized crime that relies primarily on people scamming other people, and requires a ton of back-end infrastructure and support.

In other words, it's harder and success depends on a whole different set of factors.

The person I was replying to was basically asserting that Apple fixed the virus problem that existed before OSX, and as a result malware cartels in 2017 aren't able to attack OSX. Would you believe it if they were saying polio vaccination campaigns in the 50's put a dent in drive-by shootings in the 90's?

Re: Mysterious Mac Malware Has Infected Victims for Years

#107

Post by mysterypie »

kalleboo wrote: post #104
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.

Nobody can guarantee their software is secure (secure software doesn't exist), but the cash value of a sandbox escape/jailbreak of iOS on the black market (or probably even through Apple's bug bounty) far exceeds the value that would be generated from some adware or cryptolocker scam all but guarantees that you won't see any widespread malware.

> cash value of a sandbox escape/jailbreak of iOS on the black market...guarantees that you won't see any widespread malware

Why would the black market pay huge sums for a sandbox escape or jailbreak -- unless it's for malware?

If the answer is "for use by intelligence agencies", well that's malware by any reasonable definition.

Re: Mysterious Mac Malware Has Infected Victims for Years

#108

Post by matheweis »

tyingq wrote: post #2

"It was also written in Perl, a language that's "archaic" for malware" Perhaps why it's good at running under the radar.

It's not just perl; the screen capture code apparently references GWorlds, something I frankly have not seen since writing software in the 1990's for pre OS X APIs. It's so old that Googling for gworld hardly has any relevant results.

Most of the sample code for those APIs was deprecated by the mid 2000's

Unless the attacker had some unique reason for using that, which seems unlikely, that really does put the code at about 10 years old or so...

Re: Mysterious Mac Malware Has Infected Victims for Years

#109

Post by SimbaOnSteroids »

Chaebixi wrote: post #71
valine wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

So, in other words, iOS is insecure and vulnerable to malware. Governments don't have special hacking powers, they mainly have money and manpower. It's true, iOS might raise the bar a little bit compared to some other systems, but IMHO it's misleading and dangerous to claim that it's invulnerable.

I agree with your statement here but it should be noted that a lot of cyber security is the joke about running away from a bear. I don't have to outrun the bear, I just have to out run you.

Re: Mysterious Mac Malware Has Infected Victims for Years

#110

Post by andrewflnr »

wfunction wrote: post #91
threeseed wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This notion existed far before that ad came out. It's a combination of a few things: (1) why bother investing time and resources for a platform with around 10% of users and (2) OSX has had strong security mechanisms e.g Gatekeeper, XProtect, App Sandbox. Windows 10 is much better but unfortunately not everyone is on that OS yet.

> Windows 10 is much better but unfortunately not everyone is on that OS yet. Implying Windows 8.1 has security problems... what are they?

Some of these: http://cve.mitre.org/cgi-bin/cvekey.cgi?keyword=windows+8.1 though I'll grant most of the ones on the front page at least are basically just "everything from 7 on".
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