Apple Steps Up Antivirus Promotion As Attacks Increase

Author	Gordon Kelly
Published	2nd Dec 2008

Apple Steps Up Antivirus Promotion As Attacks Increase

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It's rare for Apple to admit any vulnerabilities with its Mac OS X platform, but with growing popularity comes growing responsibility...

Consequently the Cupertino giant has come forward to actively promote antivirus solutions this week as the company increasingly finds itself the target of cyber criminals and it has quietly posted a notice on virus protection stating: "Apple encourages the widespread use of multiple antivirus utilities so that virus programmers have more than one application to circumvent, thus making the whole virus writing process more difficult."

Apple also actively promotes 'Intego VirusBarrier X5', 'Symantec Norton Anti-Virus 11 for Macintosh' and ' McAfee VirusScan for Mac' - though I can't imagine why anyone would run "multiple utilities" as the combination of Firewall, AV solution and common sense should serve the majority just fine.

Of course all this is old hat for Windows users who have been kicked from pillar to post with viruses, adware and phishing for many a year - primarily because Windows has by far the largest industry share. With this share dropping below 90 per cent for the first time last month however and Macs now hovering near the 10 per cent mark they've popped up on the radar of the less scrupulous. The recent 'AppleScript.THT' virus for example recently hit Mac OS X users attempting to log keystrokes and snag screen shots.

So be careful out there Mac users... oh and welcome to real world!

Update: Apple's pulling the note, calling it old and once again saying Macs are rock solid. The Jobsian universe has clearly got back into step.

Link:
Mac Virus Notification

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The Mighty Ben said on 3rd December 2008

This just in from news.cnet.com: "Apple late on Tuesday removed an old item from its support site that urged Mac customers to use multiple antivirus utilities and now says the... more

Stephen Allred said on 3rd December 2008

@The Mighty Ben
"Personally, my Mac Mini has remained fast far longer than any PC I've ever had, & I put this down to being naturally virus-resistant." W... more

Stephen Allred said on 3rd December 2008

@Aetheric
"...or you could pick a flavour of Linux and skin it to look and feel exactly like OS X."
With X11? Are you mad? X11 is a dire piece of software... more