If there were a virus that only spread by person to person contact and only red-haired people with blue eyes could catch it, it wouldn't successfully replicate.
Like red headed, blue eyed people, Macs are actually kind of rare.
A new Gartner report (reported by AppleInsider) notes that despite increased sales, the Mac has yet to gain a market share increase.The report, however, partially conflicts with a previous ZDNet report based on preliminary Gartner data.
Worldwide Mac Market Share
1Q 2005: 2.2%
1Q 2006 (ZDNet): 2.3%
1Q 2006 (AI): 2.0%
Like their cyber counterparts, biological viruses do not infect everyone who is exposed. Lets say we have a really virulent virus that successfully infects 10% of those exposed. You are now looking at .2% of the computers in operation having to be in contact with another member of the .2% vulnerable community. Odds of random contact are about 1 in 500. If the virus spreads at all, it will spread VERY slowly.
Since hacking is all about reputation, there is no real incentive to create a virus that will likely never be noticed. Now that Jobs has thrown down the gauntlet, SOME hackers have taken notice, but, trust me, the really talented, nasty, hackers in Eastern Europe and Asia are in it for the bucks, and there ain't no bucks in hacking Macs.
The reputation is in being the first. And that position has gone unfulfilled for six years.
This isn't really about Apple, but of the solid stability and security of BSD. BSD has been its own full OS, on the net and hacked on, since before Microsoft even released its first graphical shell to MS-DOS 3.1. Work began on the FreeBSD branch that Apple uses around the same time Microsoft released NT -- an OS designed to work with trusted users on small local networks. Other hardened systems use FreeBSD, such as VXWorks (the RTOS used in the Mars Rover and newer Linksys routers) and various other routers and firewalls.
This is very true, also most hackers are cowards and afraid of the massive publicity that would rain down on them if a destructive "Mac virus" was ever traced back to them. These guys behind this "month of bugs" bs are only providing exploits, not actual destructive code, as destructive code is what gets the law calling. That being said, writing a successful Mac virus (which by definition requires user interaction) would not be easy, even if anyone had the guts to write and release it.
Again we must prove the fallacy of the "Security by Obscurity" myth.
The Market Share you are referring to is only percentage of ALL computers sold(including dedicated control systems, point-of-sale, workstations, servers, etc. It is not installed base.
Crusher, there are 25,000,000 OS X users. In the United States, it is about 14-18% of consumer computer users, depending on which survey you select. That is hardly hardly an insignificant number. Virus and spyware have been produced for computers with a far smaller installed base than even 2%. I could list them, but that has been done before. Yet the Mac, with a larger installed base than these has ZERO. Before OS X, with its industrial strength UNIX base, the Mac OS had its share of virulent viruses and malware... with a far smaller installed base. Yet, now, with the larger installed base and a more prominent presence in the market (at least the US market) there are still ZERO malware in the wild for the OS X Mac.
You say that there is no money in hacking Macs. I beg to differ. The average Mac users have more disposable income than the bargain hunting average PC users (various surveys have shown this). Most of those Mac users are operating without anti-virus, anti-adware or anti-spyware software, most of them do not even have their firewalls turned on. To hear PC bigots, Mac users are less sophisticated computer users than Windows users. They should be sitting ducks but no one has come up with malware to attempt to steal their IDs, to find their bank accounts or credit card numbers. Spyware? None. Ad-ware? NONE! Browser Hijackers? NONE!
The gauntlet was thrown down years ago... about six for OS X... and there are still ZERO virus or spyware in the wild for the Mac. If we even accept your 2% worldwide figure (a year out of date) then we should expect to see 2% of the 200,000 plus malware in the wild for the Mac... but it is still ZERO.
Challenges with cash prizes were offered in the past (Let's stress that again for comprehension challenged readers like for-q: IN THE PAST) for hackers who break into a hardened Mac... they went unclaimed. The only reported successful attack on an OS X Mac was when a Swedish hacker, hoping to damage the Mac's reputation challenged crackers to "rm-my-Mac" and it was compromised in under 30 minutes! But then it was learned he gave everyone who wanted to try a LOCAL account, turned off all of the built in protections, turned on ALL ports, activated ROOT, and used a weak password for his administrator and root accounts. Immediately following the Swedish hoax attempt, the IT manager for the University of Wisconsin made his own challenge by placing an out of the box Mac Mini on the web as a server and challenged people to break in. 36 hours and thousands of attempts later, the university pulled the plug on the contest because of bandwidth usage... but the Mac Mini was unscathed.
Another publicized breaking into a Mac was the infamous WiFi break-in in under 60 seconds by Maynor and Ellch at last summer's Black Hat conference in Las Vegas. That, too, has been exposed as a hoax... they used a 3rd party WiFi card and pre-prepared the Macbook. They have been challenged to break into an out of the box, brand new Macbook by John Gruber of Daring Fireball... if they do it, they get the new Macbook. Gruber still has his Macbook.
The real reason the Mac is more secure than Windows is not "security by obscurity" but an operating system architecture that was built with security and multiple users in mind.