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To the best of my knowledge, there has never been an example of Mac malware in the wild.
by ChristianGeek 11y ago
To the best of my knowledge, there has never been an example of Mac malware in the wild.
- coldtea 11y agoWhy the downvotes? He's right. The example links are trojans you have to click to install or proofs of concept, but neither of them ever got to any significant number of users. And it's not just about "Mac's smaller install base" either. Amiga and Atari had and even smaller install base (and no commercial interest at all for the malware) but there were tons of viruses for them. There were also several for Mac OS (pre X).
- DanBC 11y ago> There were also several for Mac OS (pre X) That's not none in the wild ever. HN can sometimes be a bit literal. (I didn't downvote parent and I've applied an upvote to correct it). But also click-to-run trojans are malware. They might not be self replicating; some aspects of OSX might limit the harm; but they are malware and they do exist.
- coldtea 11y ago>But also click-to-run trojans are malware. Yeah, they are. But nothing one can do about them besides sandboxing apps (which OS X already does for MAS apps). At some point, when you click on an app you allow it to execute what code it has. So the real worthy of the name malware to me is that that spreads by itself without user intervention. E.g. as a virus, or by visiting a page which uses some exploit, etc.
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- tensor 11y agoOn the other hand, I have seen chrome malware on a mac. But as usual, you have to willingly install it.
- seanmcdirmid 11y agoSurely, you can't be serious. Or you are referring to the post OS X Mac and not System 6/7/8, where viruses were pretty common (having worked tech support back then...).
- coldtea 11y agoHe obviously refers to post OS X. All the media scares never got anywhere near the majority of Macs, were there are Windows XP viruses that half of the Windows users got...
- seanmcdirmid 11y agoHe should have said that then. Obviously, viruses and malware were a big thing on pre-OS X Macs and even Apple IIs; that is basically where they got their start!
- martey 11y agohttps://support.apple.com/en-us/HT202225 https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT202225
- Alupis 11y agohttp://securitywatch.pcmag.com/none/295168-the-ten-most-dangerous-mac-viruses http://securitywatch.pcmag.com/none/295168-the-ten-most-dang...