WHAT? Why would she have to do that. Wiping the hard drive and reinstalling is a simple task.
I have a family member with a Mac that had a keystroke logger loaded up on her system and her accounts started to be broken into.
If she had a keylogger installed on her Mac, either she or someone who had administrator access to her computer installed it. I am certain you did not hear all of the story. She better look really closely at anyone she has let have access to her computer.
While Macs are less vulnerable to random, indirect attacks, they are actually much more vulnerable to DIRECT attacks. This is because most Mac users have no protection at all and don’t bother scanning for security threats.
Not true. While some direct attacks on Mac OSX have been successful, they can be counted on the fingers of one hand... if two fingers have been chopped off. Not one of those successful attacks, all of which required some action by the targeted user, would have been prevented or even detected by any form of anti-malware. The attacks by Charlie Miller, an ex-NSA computer security expert, were not quick, even though the Mac fell in under two minutes, because he spent months searching for the vulnerability and then building an exploit with the help of two other ex-NSA experts in his company. Miller stated that his vulnerability and exploit would have worked just as well on Windows Vista or Linux as it did on the Mac because he was targeting third party apps. The Windows Vista machine fell six hours later to a fellow who did NO prior preparation. The Linux box did not fall.
There are fewer than 20 known malware for OSX Macs. 12 of those are Trojan Horses. Anti-Malware CAN protect you against a known trojan horse... but you are better protected by not downloading apps from untrusted sources.
Scanning for security threats has proven to be a waste of time on Macs... ask any of the Mac users on here. I have ClamXAV... and the only thing it has ever found were Windows viruses attached to spam emails that are not at all a threat on a Mac.
“WHAT? Why would she have to do that. Wiping the hard drive and reinstalling is a simple task. “
No. Some keystroke loggers can reside in the hardware and swapping out the hard drive doesn’t remove them. Look up the topic on google.
My point is that a directed attack is easy on a Mac because the users hear that they don’t need to be concerned about security.