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To me this seems like Gruber doing damage control for Apple again. There's no doubt that simple scams like this will increase as marketshare does, and pretendi

To me this seems like Gruber doing damage control for Apple again. There's no doubt that simple scams like this will increase as marketshare does, and pretending like it's not already happening is fooling nobody.

joebadmo 15y ago
Yeah, I really don't understand Gruber's position on this. It seems fairly obvious and inarguable that as Macs become a bigger target, there will be more and worse malware on them. Is he saying that there's something inherent to Mac OS that makes malware harder? If so, what?
- rimantas 15y ago
  Gruber wrote more then once in the past about market share argument. It's been going on for years. And there were more viruses for Mac OS versions prior to OS X with even smaller market share. I think one advantage OS X always had compared to Win < 7 that users never had a habit to run with administrator rights all the time.
  - joebadmo 15y ago
    Sure, that's one advantage, but it doesn't seem like a decisive one, really. I must have missed his arguments re market share. I've only ever seen him post the historically periodic articles about how people have always been saying it's about to happen. What are his actual arguments? If anything, I feel like Mac OS X will potentially be more vulnerable. To make the anatomical analogy, Windows has always had a lot of exposure to malware, and as a result there's a fairly robust anti-malware ecosystem, like anti-bodies in an immune system. OS X, on the other hand, hasn't. It's evolved in the absence of many attacks, and has a proportionally weaker immune system. Ok, I'm not sure I buy that completely, but the market share argument seems like a straightforward one.
    - wtallis 15y ago
      Most iterations of the "market share argument" I've seen imply that at some time in the future, Mac market share will reach a tipping point and writing viruses for OS X will be lucrative enough that there will be a dramatic increase in the amount of malware being flung at Macs. It has the same problem that plagues every other apocalyptic argument: the world keeps not ending. Nobody ever says how much market share OS X needs to reach this tipping point, which makes it pretty hard to falsify. Meanwhile, the Mac market share keeps growing, year after year, with only minor increases in the prevalence of malware, and no major botnets or worms of the sort that were rampant on Win9x and early XP. Claiming that OS X is (or will be) a soft target also serves to further undermine the market share argument: Windows has been getting more secure over time, which should help make OS X a more attractive target if it really is a softer target than Windows.
      - joebadmo 15y ago
        You're totally right, that market share argument is often vague and probably unfalsifiable, but there's at least a clear logic to it. "It hasn't happened yet," on the other hand, is not an argument at all. An analysis charting data of total malware vs. market share would be more interesting, but an argument for why it hasn't happened yet, and will continue not to would be the most interesting to me. I'm not sure I follow your last point.
        bediger 15y ago
        I don't know that the "market share" argument is unfalsifyable. The Witty Worm of 2004 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Witty_(computer_worm) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Witty_(computer_worm)) attacked a particular vendor's firewall implementation. It seems to have infected every one of the 12,000 members of the susceptible population. That's a pretty small market share, even in the firewall market, even in 2004. The Witty Worm seems like a good counter-example of the "market share" argument. As for full disclosure, I personally regard the "market share" argument as a form of the Special Pleading logical fallacy.
        15y ago
- Anechoic 15y ago
  Is he saying that there's something inherent to Mac OS that makes malware harder? No, he's saying that everytime there is a virus/trojan/rootkit/malware found in the wild that targets MacOS X there is a chorus of articles in the tech media essentially proclaiming that the end is nigh for safe computing on the Mac. There is malware/etc that targets Macs. There will always be malware that targets Mac. I doubt Gruber doesn't believe this. However the existence of particular piece of malicious software is not the same as a widespread practice that will bring down the platform as is seemingly presumed by the various tech articles that talk about Mac malware.
  - joebadmo 15y ago
    I agree that one instance of malware doesn't necessarily mean anything, but growing market share does. And what the ars article points out that's really pernicious is Apple's response to the issue, which is not a good sign for how they might deal with the growth of malware as a reaction to growing market share. Especially in light of Apple's marketing re security of Mac OS. And Gruber doesn't seem to be making an argument in this post. He agrees with the reporting but quibbles with a tertiary, almost irrelevant graph.

joebadmo 15y ago

Yeah, I really don't understand Gruber's position on this. It seems fairly obvious and inarguable that as Macs become a bigger target, there will be more and worse malware on them. Is he saying that there's something inherent to Mac OS that makes malware harder? If so, what?

rimantas 15y ago
Gruber wrote more then once in the past about market share argument. It's been going on for years. And there were more viruses for Mac OS versions prior to OS X with even smaller market share. I think one advantage OS X always had compared to Win < 7 that users never had a habit to run with administrator rights all the time.
- joebadmo 15y ago
  Sure, that's one advantage, but it doesn't seem like a decisive one, really. I must have missed his arguments re market share. I've only ever seen him post the historically periodic articles about how people have always been saying it's about to happen. What are his actual arguments? If anything, I feel like Mac OS X will potentially be more vulnerable. To make the anatomical analogy, Windows has always had a lot of exposure to malware, and as a result there's a fairly robust anti-malware ecosystem, like anti-bodies in an immune system. OS X, on the other hand, hasn't. It's evolved in the absence of many attacks, and has a proportionally weaker immune system. Ok, I'm not sure I buy that completely, but the market share argument seems like a straightforward one.
  - wtallis 15y ago
    Most iterations of the "market share argument" I've seen imply that at some time in the future, Mac market share will reach a tipping point and writing viruses for OS X will be lucrative enough that there will be a dramatic increase in the amount of malware being flung at Macs. It has the same problem that plagues every other apocalyptic argument: the world keeps not ending. Nobody ever says how much market share OS X needs to reach this tipping point, which makes it pretty hard to falsify. Meanwhile, the Mac market share keeps growing, year after year, with only minor increases in the prevalence of malware, and no major botnets or worms of the sort that were rampant on Win9x and early XP. Claiming that OS X is (or will be) a soft target also serves to further undermine the market share argument: Windows has been getting more secure over time, which should help make OS X a more attractive target if it really is a softer target than Windows.
    - joebadmo 15y ago
      You're totally right, that market share argument is often vague and probably unfalsifiable, but there's at least a clear logic to it. "It hasn't happened yet," on the other hand, is not an argument at all. An analysis charting data of total malware vs. market share would be more interesting, but an argument for why it hasn't happened yet, and will continue not to would be the most interesting to me. I'm not sure I follow your last point.
      - bediger 15y ago
        I don't know that the "market share" argument is unfalsifyable. The Witty Worm of 2004 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Witty_(computer_worm) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Witty_(computer_worm)) attacked a particular vendor's firewall implementation. It seems to have infected every one of the 12,000 members of the susceptible population. That's a pretty small market share, even in the firewall market, even in 2004. The Witty Worm seems like a good counter-example of the "market share" argument. As for full disclosure, I personally regard the "market share" argument as a form of the Special Pleading logical fallacy.
        15y ago
Anechoic 15y ago
Is he saying that there's something inherent to Mac OS that makes malware harder? No, he's saying that everytime there is a virus/trojan/rootkit/malware found in the wild that targets MacOS X there is a chorus of articles in the tech media essentially proclaiming that the end is nigh for safe computing on the Mac. There is malware/etc that targets Macs. There will always be malware that targets Mac. I doubt Gruber doesn't believe this. However the existence of particular piece of malicious software is not the same as a widespread practice that will bring down the platform as is seemingly presumed by the various tech articles that talk about Mac malware.
- joebadmo 15y ago
  I agree that one instance of malware doesn't necessarily mean anything, but growing market share does. And what the ars article points out that's really pernicious is Apple's response to the issue, which is not a good sign for how they might deal with the growth of malware as a reaction to growing market share. Especially in light of Apple's marketing re security of Mac OS. And Gruber doesn't seem to be making an argument in this post. He agrees with the reporting but quibbles with a tertiary, almost irrelevant graph.