Mac Malware Sighting
baltimoresun.com – Apple a Day: Another overreaction to a Mac malware sighting
Apparently, the media is having a field day with a Macintosh malware sighting. The commentary article linked above notes that in order to actually become infected, a Mac OS X user has to do several not-too-bright things, starting with trusting software content provided by porn sites.
Computer security is something that everyone has to worry about, but choice of operating system does make a difference in the amount of worrying one has to do. I run FreeBSD based servers, Linux desktops, Windows desktops, and I use a Mac OS X laptop and a dual-booting Windows Vista and Linux (Xubuntu distro) laptop, so I get to worry in several different ways.
Unix systems, such as what Mac OS X is based upon, do have vulnerabilities that turn up. I have to keep track of reported problems with basic software because Unix servers are tempting targets for crackers. Those sorts of things involve attempting to force a remote Unix computer to execute arbitrary code, usually by finding some component of an application that doesn’t yet trim input strings to a limited length, or which doesn’t “clean” untrusted user input to prevent data from suddenly being treated as instructions, as may happen when one submits queries to a database application. Mostly, though, those sorts of attacks simply are not aimed at personal computing. The current instance of Mac malware is aimed at the personal computing user (because of the porn angle, I suppose we could consider this very personal computing). What’s notable about this, though, is that it is news.
That’s not the case with my Windows systems, where I need to regularly run a couple of anti-spyware applications just to periodically remove several malware instances that inevitably turn up. Unless, of course, one runs a Windows box that not only is not hooked up to the Internet, but also has never been exposed to a Windows box that has been connected to the Internet. Another Windows malware instance? That’s not news, that’s threat number 91,457 in Spybot’s Search and Destroy catalog of bad stuff.
