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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

#111

Post by dingo_bat »

pdeuchler wrote: post #75
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…

Well, what is true is that it's extremely hard to execute arbitrary code without user knowledge on a Mac. Windows has thousands upon thousands of arbitrary code execution bugs where simply opening something like a pdf can allow an attacker to run arbitrary code as a privileged user. There are many defense mechanisms to this that are inherent to the design and implementation of Darwin/Mac OS.

I don't think that's been true since windows 7. Almost all new viruses rely on user stupidity.

Re: Mysterious Mac Malware Has Infected Victims for Years

#114

Post by closeparen »

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…

The operative form of this belief is, "you probably shouldn't buy and install a consumer antivirus product for your Mac like you would with a PC" which is probably still true.

Re: Mysterious Mac Malware Has Infected Victims for Years

#115

Post by pjmlp »

pdeuchler wrote: post #84
munin wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There are many defense mechanisms to this that are inherent to the design and implementation of Darwin/Mac OS. Do you have an example? Beyond the idea of user/root separation, which doesn't really do much for modern single user computers: https://xkcd.com/1200/

Kinda unfair to not let me use the biggest example (DAC/user separation) just because there might be sensitive data with user permissions when we're talking about arbitrary code execution. Even still, such a concept makes privilege execution orders of magnitude harder on * nix systems. POSIX philosophy also prevents the "keys to the kingdom" kind of exploits you can get in windows, many linux exploits are much harder…

Virus were invented on UNIX.

Re: Mysterious Mac Malware Has Infected Victims for Years

#116

Post by pjmlp »

coldtea wrote: post #26
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.

> As someone new to the Mac ecosystem, is it standard practice to run an antivirus as it is on Windows? No, almost nobody does it (plus, a few "antivirus" products for Mac are malware themselves, e.g. Mac Defender etc.). Most so-called "viruses" for Mac are in fact merely trojans (programs you need to download and run yourself to infect you).

Corporate laptops everywhere I worked are subject to the same anti-virus policies, regardless of the operating system.

Re: Mysterious Mac Malware Has Infected Victims for Years

#117

Post by tluyben2 »

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.

With all the security hetze and Apple pushing iOS as mainstream OS, I still do not get why this security depends on software and not hardware. Make it impossible for apps to break out of its jail at a hardware level.

Re: Mysterious Mac Malware Has Infected Victims for Years

#118

Post by RandVal30142 »

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

What makes it even worse is they carried this over into a support FAQ stating the OS didn't come with an antivirus because X-security features.

If anyone remembers the vintage of this I'd love to dig an archived copy up.

Re: Mysterious Mac Malware Has Infected Victims for Years

#120

Post by divanvisagie »

sitkack wrote: post #112
snarfy wrote: post #65

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

I see no reason to believe it wasn't. Being brutally pedestrian is the kind of thing I would expect out of great hackers.

Also , it may make sense to write malware that looks like it wasn't a nation state if you are a nation state
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