[Jo Nuvark]

Hubby would agree with you accept he reasons Mac’s aren’t a target because there are less of them.
I’m a conspiracy theorist (which I’m sure you already know) and find it a compelling question
considering the long standing enmity between Steve Jobs and Bill Gates.

[conservatism_IS_compassion]

Hubby would agree with you accept he reasons Mac’s aren’t a target because there are less of them.
I’m a conspiracy theorist (which I’m sure you already know) and find it a compelling question considering the long standing enmity between Steve Jobs and Bill Gates.

At this late date hacking computers is a business opportunity. People would hack Macs in preference to PCs if

1. there were enough Macs around to make a good business out of,
2. there was no competition, so that they could be the only one to take over Macs, and
3. they actually could take over the Macs.

The first two criteria are attractive for hackers. The third, apparently not so much.

[Swordmaker]

Hubby would agree with you accept he reasons Mac’s aren’t a target because there are less of them.

Ask your hubby just how many Macs he thinks might be enough to make attacking them attractive to hackers?

Here are some facts to help him decide:

• The World wide installed base of OSX Macs is approaching 40 million. Approximately 30 million of those are in the United States, where several surveys have shown that, among consumers, almost 20% of PCs in use are Macs.

• 98% of ALL Macs are probably being run without any anti-malware applications at all. Most don't even have the default software firewall turned on.

• Mac users, based on their experience with Macs, have been shown to be not as fearful of opening emailed attachments, more willing to go to linked websites without worry, and generally be more inclined to consider the web as safe to explore than their PC using friends. Windows users, based on their experiences with Windows, consider this attitude to be "naive."

• Other studies have shown that Mac users, as a group, are more affluent than Windows PC users.

• Non-Mac users claim that Macs have "just as many" or "more" vulnerabilities than do Windows computers."

All of this should make Macs very attractive targets for thieves.

So just how many Macs will it take to make it attractive for hackers to take advantage of all those "vulnerabilities" and steal money from those affluent Mac users?

Some more facts for your hubby's consideration in determining his answer to the question:

Hackers have written viruses for Windows that targeted fewer than 12,000 vulnerable machines. The Witty Worm, designed to exploit an already patched vulnerability in Black Ice's firewall application for Windows, infected all 12,000 unpatched Black Ice protected computers on the internet less than 45 minutes after it was released into the wild . Other hackers have written viruses that were designed to infect iPhones that had been converted to run LINUX as an OS—which probably numbered in the low three digits if we're generous. Hackers have written malware designed to infect a cell phone that had just 30,000 sold.

All of this and more shows that hackers have shown a predilection to write malware for anything even remotely capable of exploitation. So, if the Mac is as easy as some Windows people claim it is to exploit, where ARE the exploits attacking the 40 million sitting duck Macs? Where are the viruses? Where is the spyware? Where are the worms? Where is the Mac's fair share of the now over one million Windows malware attacks?

If the Mac were as easy to exploit as Microsoft's Windows, to match the Mac's world wide market share, Mac users should expect to see around 5% of all malware being written for Macs. In the US, it should be at least about 10% to meet half their consumer market penetration? That would be 50,000 to 100,000 expected malware examples. We do not see such numbers of Mac OSX malware... it's not even close.

Instead of Mac malware in the tens of thousands, the OSX Mac has attracted just under twenty (not 20 thousand, fewer than 20) total known malware examples in nine years. Most of the Mac malware are Trojan Horses—malicious programs that are designed to do something other than what they are claimed they will do which depend on trickery to get a user to install them on their machines—all of which have been described as being only mildly dangerou. Security firms describe these Trojans for the Mac as having infected from zero to 50 machines. If we were to assume that all 20 Mac malware infected the maximum of 50, then that would be 1000 infected Macs. In nine years, there have been only 1,000 infected Macs out of about 50 million sold? That's not just pretty good security, that's phenomenal security!

There have also been seven proof-of-concept worms and viruses that have never been seen outside of a computer security lab. Most of those proof-of-concept did not even work as intended! One such Mac worm, the OSX.Oompa-Loompa.A/OSX.LeapA worm was a POC example that was intended to invade other Macs by exploiting an already closed vulnerability in Bonjour, Apple's auto-recognition system for computers and peripherals on a Local Area Network. Researchers reviewing this wormfound it took two security specialists from Secunia, two Apple experts from Macworld Magazine, and over six hours to get the oompa-Loompa to merely copy itself from the infected lab Mac to another Mac, which when copied to the target machine, required the target user to accept the file and run it himself(!), where it then failed to execute.

I would suggest to you and your hubby, that there is something else operating here than mere "Security by Obscurity."