1 in 5 Macs Has Malware [STUDY]

Mashable ^ | 24 Apr 2012 | Todd Wasserman

[for-q-clinton]

In a challenge to the prevailing belief that Apple computers are immune to the sort of cyberattacks that plague WIndows-based machines, research firm Sophos has released a study claiming that one in five Macs have malware.

The report, released on Tuesday, is based on a “100,000-strong snapshot” of the millions of Macs that downloaded Sophos’s free Mac antivirus software. The study found that 20% of Macs were carrying one or more instances of Windows malware.

Such malware doesn’t cause symptoms unless the Mac owners run Windows on their machines, but it can be spread to others.

However, this doesn’t appear to be solely a Windows-based problem. The report also found that 2.7% of Macs were infected with Mac OS malware. The majority of such Mac OS malware is composed of fake antivirus attacks, like the recent Flashback botnet. Mac owners can contract such malware by downloading email attachments, visiting rogue websites and unknowingly installing it via their USB drive. The chart below provides a breakdown of the types of Mac OS malware:

To avoid downloading such malware, Sophos recommends running an antivirus program and keeping it up to date, exercising caution about which links you click on, keep software patches current and keeping an eye out for email-based scams.

[Hodar]

Is your bent case causing your DVD drives to fail?

3 DVD drives is a statistical flyer - that’s an obscene failure rate that is not typically seen in the consumer level market. I used to work as a Failure Analysis Engineer for a large computer company. As an FA Engineer, I’d have authorized you a new computer just to have a gander at what was going on with yours. Something is amiss.

I too, am pretty disappointed in the Metro interface, and figure this is as good a time as any to hop to a Mac. The Mac Mini + $39 to Amazon will bump the i5 chipset to 8 Gig of RAM, this should be a little screamer. As the Mac Mini doesn’t have an internal DVD/CD drive, I’ll just have to install a USB DVD/CD drive on this.

Like anything else - it may take awhile to get used to using this. I completely understand the ‘shoes on the wrong feet’ feeling. But, having made a home video with iMovie in about 15 minutes that looks super; and having spent weeks editing and trying to do something similar with 4 different Windows programs (frustrating); I’m tired of fighting Windows. Even making a shared folder that anyone can drop stuff into, has become a huge task. With XP, this was a cake-walk, took just a few clicks. With Win7, it’s a royal pain in the backside. I spent hours trying to get it to work with my new HP Deskjet (fax/scanner/printer) - just to get the printer the ‘authority’ to drop a scanned document onto my hard drive. That is insane.

[for-q-clinton]

1st I subscribe to mashable and this was pushed to me on Facebook.

2nd even if what you say was true doesn’t change the facts of this article.

[for-q-clinton]

Curious what 4 windows programs did you try?

[Hodar]

Roxio Creator (came with my DVD player), Adobe Premier Pro (older ... like 2005), Avid Studio (~2003 vintage), Pinnacle (came with my Sony camcorder) and Windows Movie.

They were either too sophisticated, too buggy (crashed often) or too clumsy.

I had a bunch of short videos I had shot of taking my parents on a Carribean cruise for their 50th anniversary. Shots of them arriving at the airport, us packing for the cruise, boarding ... debarking at various stops ... stuff like that.

I just wanted a 5 minute ‘memory’ and spent weeks trying to get it put together. Gaaah! Either the background was too loud, or too quiet, the music didn’t mesh, the transitions were horrible. So, after weeks of working on this for an hour or so during the week - I just gave up.

Then, my friend showed me iMovie on his Mac Mini; and we put together a short video in about 15 minutes - and it looked professional in every way. iMovie has canned plattens you just drop your video/stills into; and it does the work. Utterly painless - and actually quite a bit of fun.

[Keith in Iowa]

BFD “it was pushed to me” ... I don’t give a rodent’s patoot. You posted it here to start fights. It’s what you do. You are a troll. And a monumental wazoo aperture.

[dangerdoc]

I did some fine tuning to the case with a screw driver and a file. The third DVD drive has worked for about a year and it is ejecting pretty well now. I’m sure they would have some issues with my case modification and we didn’t have an extended warranty anyway.

I still back up and process all of my video and pictures on a windows computer. I was never comfortable with the way that the Mac just does things without me knowing where they were going, besides that, the Mac is an old dual core and I have a nice newer i7 for things that benefit from more horsepower.

You do have a point about printers, there is something seriously wrong with window’s support of wireless printers.

[Swordmaker]

A classic case of our self-designated Mac FUD SPREADER for-q-clinton NOT READING THE ARTICLE!—PING!

The report, released on Tuesday, is based on a “100,000-strong snapshot” of the millions of Macs that downloaded Sophos’s free Mac antivirus software. The study found that 20% of Macs were carrying one or more instances of Windows malware.

I am STILL looking to find widespread reports of the users reporting finding the Flashback trojan on their INFECTED Mac computers on the help forums! I am not finding them. They are JUST NOT THERE... yet the honey pot that Doctor Web reported they have—which reported upwards of 600,000 infected Macs, which we now KNOW was not true and the number keeps dropping—keeps reporting the UUID's of KNOWN TO BE NON-INFECTED Macs, including brand-new, just out of the box iMacs with OSX Lion (which does not have Java installed), as being members of the supposed Mac botnet! Since this is not possible! I maintain it is most likely a hoax of a very small Trojan threat that does exist in the wild and the so-called honey pot is merely a list of known UUIDs assigned to Apple. . . otherwise we would be SEEING a lot of people with infected Macs. We simply are not seeing them.

Apple Mac FUD Ping!

Please, No Flame Wars!
Discuss technical issues, software, and hardware.
Don't attack people!
Don't respond to the Anti-Apple Thread Trolls!
PLEASE IGNORE THEM!!!

If you want on or off the Mac Ping List, Freepmail me.

[B Knotts]

Well, anti-virus is a good idea, but it doesn’t protect against malware.

The only thing that will protect against that is not clicking on everything you see.

And, on Windows, regularly running MalwareBytes.

[Swordmaker]

Actually, it wasn’t all that interesting, and I run Mac, Linux, and Windows machines. If you read the article closely, you surely noticed only 2.7% of Macs were infected with Mac OS malware. That seems pretty low to me. The 1 in 5 figure was for Macs with Windows software, i.e. Boot Camp. Based on my experiences, Mac OS is by far a better operating system as far as malware. That’s not saying Windows and Linux don’t have their own advantages. They do.

That's not even "infected"... just present. They are all trojans. They may be sitting in an unopened email... un-executed. If the the Mac is a newer Mac, running Snow Leopard or Lion, ALL of these Trojans would be prevented from running.

The OTHER dirty secret of Sophos' AV, is that it TURNS OFF Apple's own anti-Trojan software so that Sophos' AV can even see the downloads as they occur... otherwise the system prevents the download from occurring! If you were running the System Software as intended, the AV from Sophos would not even see the vast majority of the Mac Trojans it is reporting.

[for-q-clinton]

Wow you tried all the worse ones.

Cyberlink Power Producer is great.
Adobe Premiere Elements is really good too.
If slides are what you want Proshow Gold is the best..it does video too, but not very well.

The WIndows Movie maker was probably the easiest to use in your list, but it’s not powerful enough> I found the two above (Cyberlink and Premier Elements) to strike a good balance between power and useability.

[Swordmaker]

Think about it, 1 in 5 macs have the stuff and it doesn’t affect them. However, you copy files from a mac to a flash drive and give it to a user with a PC and they could get infected with something. Of course, then the Mac user throws up their arms and says, “not my problem, I’m on a Mac.” I’m scared to accept files from Mac users now.

The files you are talking about are in Junk emails... photographs and imbedded viruses in trash emails. How many of your Mac using friends are going to forward Spam to you? How many are going to send you a Windows Executable program? Zero to none. Forget it.

[for-q-clinton]

You’re a troll looking for trolls. I’m posting this as a news story worthy of people reading it.

I guess by your logic everyone on FR is a troll looking to push their point of view.

[Keith in Iowa]

>>>A classic case of our self-designated Mac FUD SPREADER for-q-clinton NOT READING THE ARTICLE!—PING!

I propose not pinging anything 4Q posts. He does it for one reason only: He’s trolling. When it comes to 4Q - I suggest we all ignoreanus.

[B Knotts]

vi is a problem looking for a solution...which, coincidentally, is emacs.

[Keith in Iowa]

Note to self: Ignoreanus.

[for-q-clinton]

I noticed you missed the 2.7% were Mac OSX malware.

And the link Hodar posted that shows windows 7 only runs a 0.4% malware infection rate.

[Swordmaker]

Macs ARE affected: “The report also found that 2.7% of Macs were infected with Mac OS malware”

No, Psycho... the Sophos AV TURNS OFF the built in protection that Apple provides so that it can see what the System prevents from being downloaded... Guaranteed way for it to find Mac Trojans. And "present" is not the same as "infected"; many of the listed trojans were merely present in un-run files in email. Email on a Mac does not execute automatically.

[for-q-clinton]

How is pointing out that 2.7% of Macs were infected with OSX Malware trolling?

And I’m not the person who posted that windows7 is only at 0.4%.

[Keith in Iowa]

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/2875860/posts?page=55#55

[TheBattman]

Read post #2...