If you were a bad guy, and you wanted to get “free money”, or “easy info”, which of these groups would you go after?
Other OS - 0%
Linux - 1.61%
Mac OS - 7.54 %
Windows - 90.85%
http://netmarketshare.com/operating-system-market-share.aspx?qprid=8&qpcustomd=0
Interesting. So you are saying that market share is the singular reason that WIN is attacked so overwhelmingly more than iOS? I heard it was due to technological advantages. Maybe you know more about this than me. Please enlighten me.
Wouldn’t the fact that there are just so many more Windows machines running (than any other platform) account for Windows being targeted more than any other (OS)?
That security by obscurity canard has been shot down multiple times in the past. It is ridiculous to keep bringing it up. There have been Windows Viruses, true viruses, written targeting Windows machines in which the vulnerable number of machines were fewer than 18,000. The Witty Worm when it was released targeted Windows Machines that had not been updated for a vulnerability in the Black Ice router. . . all 18,000 of them. Yet within 45 minutes of it being released onto the Internet all 18,000 were infected. Other viruses were written for even SMALLER populations.
There are almost 100 MILLION OS X Macs in the wild, most of the running completely bare naked, without any anti-virus protection at all except that which is built into OS X. It is known that Apple users are more affluent that Windows users. Those 100 million OS X Mac users are, to put it mildly, sitting ducks. Yet there has never been a successful true computer virus in over 17 years of trying. There simply is no viable vector in OS X to get the viruses to spread. NONE.
There are 57 known Trojan horse programs in eight distinct families for Apple OS X. . . but Apple's OS X will identify each and every one of them and the families to when they belong and WARN the user if they try to download, install, or run any of them. It takes an industrial strength STUPID user to get infected with any of these Trojans because they have to bypass the warning THREE TIMES, once at download, once at install, and once on first run, to get infected.
Apple's security has absolutely NOTHING to do with obscurity. IF someone could come up with a viable virus and found a vector that worked, every single Mac could be infected in a matter of minutes. It is just that difficult if not impossible to do it that in seventeen years no one has succeeded.
The Hacker Team just announced they are selling off their portfolio of hacking tools they sell to government police agencies. . . Android, Windows Phone, RIM, Symbian, jailbroken iPhones, everything except unjailbroken iPhones. They have not been successful in cracking into an unjailbroken iPhone. The data on unjailbroken iOS devices is encrypted to 256 bit AES standards using the passcode and/or the user's fingerprint entangled with the device's UUID stored in the device's Secure Enclave which is part of the processor of the device and inaccessible from outside the device. So iOS devices are secure.