Debunking The Myth: Apple MACs Do Get Viruses!

One of my clients asked me today, "What is the story with Apple MAC's? I have heard they don't get infected. Is it true?"
 While it is true they don't get infected as much, But, They DO get infected.

 The reason they don't get infected as much, is simple, it's in the numbers.  The writers of the "crudware" and viruses are interested in writing code affecting the largest number of targets possible, so they are going to write code that will affect the largest segment they can. The myth may have started due to Apple's slick marketing campaigns and two specific points.

 One, MAC's OS X software is built differently than a Windows Operating System. OS X doesn’t share a common registry, and MAC file structure is different, which means that Windows malware type of infections are just not as feasible on a MAC, but that doesn’t mean they are immune and totally safe, just not AS feasible.
Two, is the simple fact there are far fewer of them compared to PCs, who’s number far exceed the number of MAC systems in use, again, hackers want the largest number of systems possible.

 According to Top Ten Reviews, Apple viruses first appeared back in 1982 by “15-year-old Rich Skrenta creates the first known Macintosh viruses to go wild, Elk Cloner. The boot sector virus spreads itself on Apple II computers via infected floppy disk, and results in a short poem showing up every 50th boot.”

 Since then, there have been the INIT-29-B virus, HyperCard HC-9507, Hong Kong virus, OSX/Leap-A, OSX.Macarena, the trojan horse AppleScript.THT,  OSX.Lamzev.A and OSX.TrojanKit.Malez trojans, OSX.RSPlug.D trojan, OSX.Iservice and OSX.Iservice.B trojans, OSX/HellRTS trojan, let’s not forget FLASHBACK that affected over an estimated 600,000 machines, and most recently, the “Pintsized” trojan., which goes around Gatekeeper allowing attackers potentially unhindered access to infected machines armed with basic, inbound-only firewalls.

 The only way to guarantee your computer (PC or MAC) will never get a virus is to never plug it into the internet, and turn it off, other than that, you NEED to get a quality antivirus program installed on your machine, and keep it updated regularly.

Are you still in denial? check out last year's posts in TechSpot, the New York Times, the Huffington Post, and many more publications to enforce the warning I am attempting to convey.

 So the real question becomes, "What are you doing to protect your MAC from viruses?"

~ By Greg Cox  -Lead Technician, ComTek Computer Services Inc