Security to Become Issue for Macs
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Security professionals seem to pretty much be reaching the same consensus: security is becoming more of a concern for Macs.
Trend Micro’s David Sancho says: “The rising popularity of Macs may be luring malware authors to test profits on these platforms. Tides are turning and what many security experts have predicted is coming true: the days of malware-free Mac are numbered.”
Recent talk about Mac security stems from a a piece of “scareware” targeted at Macs discovered by F-Secure. MacSweeper is the name of this malware that deceives the user by alerting them of fake security issues on their machines. Once MacSweeper is installed, it alerts the user that it must purchase it’s software to get rid of the so-called problems.
“So what does the first Mac rogue application really mean? It means that with Mac’s growing popularity and growing user base comes certain problems that can’t be ignored…It doesn’t mean that Mac is becoming less secure in and of itself. But it does mean that Mac users will have to watch out for social engineering tricks just like Windows users have had to do for years,” writes F-Secure security response manager Patrik Runald.
If you ask me, it’s pretty amazing that it has taken this long.
January 21st, 2008 at 11:08 pm
You talk as if this is something new. They’ve been saying this exact same thing for years. We Mac users have been told over and over and over again that this was coming along with the popularity of OS X.
And they can offer up what? A single example? Sure, there was a trojan a while back that required one to type in an administrator’s password to do any damage, and even then it could not replicate itself.
Please, let us know when the sample becomes statistically significant. What we don’t need is FUD coming from a company that makes its living scaring people into buying its software.