Anti-Virus program for a Mac?

N

NewYork

Limp Gawd
Joined
Jun 30, 2009
Messages
285
Hi,

Can anyone name a few Mac anti-Virus programs?

I thought I could use Avira but I can't find it!

What are some of the better companies making anti-virus programs for Mac?
 
No need for an antivirus program on OS X because there aren't any viruses in the wild.
 
AV software is a complete waste of resources unless your attempting to protect a hybrid network.
 
I've got a Mac Mini that I use for email and web browsing, but I have not installed any antivirus software on it. It is really damned difficult to find a Mac malware to get infected with, and the choices for Mac antivirus software seems to be pretty poor.

Here we have a blog where someone tests several Mac antivirus softwares with 18 Mac trojan horses:

http://mac-security.blogspot.com/2009/07/quickie-reviews-of-clamxav-iantivirus.html

Clamxav was the best freeware antivirus, but it was pretty pathetic in July 2009, finding only 10 of the 18 Mac trojan horses he tested it with. The blog author suggested Intego VirusBarrier as the best Mac antivirus, but you have to buy it for $50, and I'm just skeptical that it is worth buying a Mac antivirus at this time.
 
I highly doubt it is worth it, if you have any "common sense" surfing abilities at all.

I personally don't even use AV on my Windoze box...

You can look at it like: the internet is the only possible place to get a virus (unless your friend just hates you or gave you an infected CD/USB drive). If you watch where you go and what you download, there should be no reason to have antivirus. A firewall is pretty much useless as well.

The chance goes down even farther when you are on a Mac, so I wouldn't even worry about it.
 
So-called "common-sense browsing" is not valid security for browsing the web with Windows. Many well-known and trusted sites get hacked, often through third-party-served advertisements. But that is for the Networking & Security forum, not here.
 
evilsofa said:
So-called "common-sense browsing" is not valid security for browsing the web with Windows. Many well-known and trusted sites get hacked, often through third-party-served advertisements. But that is for the Networking & Security forum, not here.
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Exactly, and many times they get hacked with things that are hidden and you would never know until all of a sudden your CC numbers are stolen and someone is stealing your identity.

Not running an A/V on windows is stupid.
 
OSX + common sense works fine on mac

Mcrosoft Security Essentials + common sense on a PC
 
Grentz said:
Exactly, and many times they get hacked with things that are hidden and you would never know until all of a sudden your CC numbers are stolen and someone is stealing your identity.

Not running an A/V on windows is stupid.
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I've never ran with an AV on my Windows computers, and always disabled the firewall, and I've only had a virus ONCE in 12 years (from downloading a crack..)

I do install Avira AV or Free AVG once every few months and run a scan just to be sure, and it always comes up empty.
 
Intego just released today a "Year in Mac Security" report (.PDF). It's somewhat informative, but they are trying to sell their antivirus product. I'd rather read something like this from a third-party source, but I guess the Mac antivirus "industry" isn't big enough to warrant something like av-comparatives.org.
 
It's no secret that OS X has vulnerabilities, just like any other OS. The difference is that there aren't any known exploits "in the wild". However there's virtually nothing stopping a Mac from passing on infected software without being itself infected.

That being said, I don't have any 3rd-party AV installed on any of my Macs. However, I seem to recall seeing something about ClamX AV being integrated in Leopard/Snow Leopard direct from Apple though. Can anyone confirm that?
 
Firemane said:
It's no secret that OS X has vulnerabilities, just like any other OS. The difference is that there aren't any known exploits "in the wild". However there's virtually nothing stopping a Mac from passing on infected software without being itself infected.
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An exploit and a virus are two different things.
 
I've said it before, and I will say it again...

Just because a Mac "can't get viruses" doesn't mean you should feel invincible.
Keep in mind that you might be sharing files through e-mail, p2p or whatever with windows based systems.

While the mac won't be directly affected by the malware, it will still pass it on to the next system that may be infected.

Running an occasional AV scanner is still a good idea.

ClamXav is a good free open source scanner.
 
Macs get no viruses (virii?), but there are trojans for Mac OS.
As for me, I use a firewall (protemac netmine) and everything is ok for now.
 
Firemane said:
You're splitting hairs. Viruses & worms take advantage of exploit vectors. You're technically correct, but...
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No, I'm not splitting hairs. I'm being accurate.

A virus is a rogue self-replicating file that carries out instructions from a person who is not the local computer's user.

An exploit is a method to take advantage of a vulnerability, which is a flaw in the local security structure of the host operating system.

There are no viruses in the wild that affect OS X, and the few working exploits that can compromise OS X rely almost universally on social engineering.
 
A worm exploits the code of the system from outside the system without needing any action whatsoever from the user or permission from the user. Worms are the ultimate disaster of computer security, and have become rare as operating systems have been forced in a very Darwinistic manner to prevent them from happening.

A virus requires an action from the user to enter the system; however, once it has entered the system, it does not require permission from the user to exploit the system. The action required may be as simple as viewing a web page with a third-party-served ad with malicious code.

A trojan horse requires both an action from the user to enter the system and permission from the user to execute.

A virus exploits the system; a trojan horse exploits the user.

Malware is a meta word that covers any maliciously written code, including all of the above and more.

Firemane said:
However, I seem to recall seeing something about ClamX AV being integrated in Leopard/Snow Leopard direct from Apple though. Can anyone confirm that?
Click to expand...

The Intego report I linked earlier states that while Snow Leopard does integrate an antivirus, it is extremely limited in scope: "this feature only scanned files downloaded with a handful of applications, only when those files were double-clicked or opened, and only scanned for two Trojan horses. In fact, as of January 2010, this anti-malware feature has not been updated, and still scans for the same two Trojan horses and nothing else."
 
I haven't used an AV on OS X in years, but for the past few months I've been using ClamXav. It's free, doesn't run at startup or anything like that, and is consistently updated. I've never come across a virus or whatnot since I started using Macs in 2002, but I like to run ClamXav every now and then just to be sure I'm 100% AV clean.

For Windows, MSE hands down.
 
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