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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

#121

Post by rangibaby »

13of40 wrote: post #40
coldtea wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I think what people actually think is that the chances are much lower of encountering malware in the wild on a Mac. Yes -- and what people believe is also true. It's indeed much lower, to the point of being a non-issue almost. (And it's not due to "lower market share" either. Mac OS 7/8 etc had even lower market share than today's Macs have, and it had tons of viruses).

> 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…

Your Mac should be "OK" as long as you don't log in as an admin account when the dodgy app asks.

Re: Mysterious Mac Malware Has Infected Victims for Years

#122

Post by onion2k »

bdcravens wrote: post #97
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 suspect if you went into 100 Apple stores, and asked 100 of the bubbly sales persons with their cute little Apple shirts if Macs can get viruses, you'd get 50%+ to say no.

Don't Apple stores sell Norton Antivirus? If they do I imagine the response would be far less than 50%, but it'd come with a sales pitch.

Re: Mysterious Mac Malware Has Infected Victims for Years

#123

Post by onion2k »

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

Another reason that there may be a perception that OSX is safer these days is that most users only buy software directly from Apple through the app store.

Re: Mysterious Mac Malware Has Infected Victims for Years

#124

Post by linopolus »

RandVal30142 wrote: post #118
NelsonMinar wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Depending on whom you ask, having an antivirus may actually be more harmful than not, as it digs deep into the system potentially opening more holes, while not providing much protection due to the reliance on signatures. Heuristics is not yet there to be useful.

Re: Mysterious Mac Malware Has Infected Victims for Years

#125

Post by epalmer »

valine wrote: post #61
Chaebixi wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> If you're being targeted by governments I would agree you're out of luck even on iOS.

Probably true on almost every OS.

Re: Mysterious Mac Malware Has Infected Victims for Years

#126

Post by intoverflow2 »

unpythonic wrote: post #13

The details for the infection can be found at Malwarebytes, the discoverer of this issue: https://blog.malwarebytes.com/threat-analysis/2017/01/new-ma... This article has the signature of the infection as well as listing the servers with which it communicates.

Someone correct me if I'm wrong but this seems to be talking about FruitFly 1 [1] and the article is about FruitFly 2 [2]. Been digging around and still can't find any description of how to tell if you're infected by the new one.

[1] https://www.virustotal.com/en/file/ce07d208a2d89b4e0134f5282...

[2] https://www.virustotal.com/en/file/befa9bfe488244c64db096522...

Re: Mysterious Mac Malware Has Infected Victims for Years

#127

Post by carlosrg »

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.

The same exploits that are used to jailbreak the device can be used for installing malware. There has been remotely exploitable bugs in iOS, for example in WebKit, but luckily there hasn't been people exploiting them. iOS is very safe but not perfect.

Re: Mysterious Mac Malware Has Infected Victims for Years

#128

Post by kuschku »

tensor wrote: post #69
kuschku wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Those ads still ran in 2015 on apple.com.

By that time the user restriction model of Vista had existed for 8 years.

Re: Mysterious Mac Malware Has Infected Victims for Years

#130

Post by Chaebixi »

SimbaOnSteroids wrote: post #109
Chaebixi wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Exactly. I wouldn't have a problem if people were saying "iOS is more secure than X" or "You should pick iOS because it's one of the most secure OSes, but you should still be careful." But nooo, the fanboys go too far and spew dangerous, misleading stuff like "it is secure" and "you don't have to be careful" and "it can't get malware."
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