Mac Malware Infection Rates Remaining Constant

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How can so many people be so damn stupi...ummm, never mind. Oh well, I guess all those infected Mac users shouldn't feel too bad, they have two billion bot infested PC owners to keep them company. :D

Following the Flashback malware and the estimates of 600,000 Mac systems being infected, security companies have been steadily tracking the communications done by the malware on infected systems. In recent weeks, the data from these monitoring efforts have suggested that despite early reports of the malware levels sinking rapidly from efforts by Apple, news organizations, and anti-malware companies, the levels of infections appears to be remaining constant.
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In before 10 page spiel about when exactly this virus as manufactured.
 
I thought Apple was this magical, invincible entity who's vast superior marketing blitzes couldn't get infections?!
 
Well Mac owners have been taught for years that Mac's don't get viruses, anyone surprised none of them do shit to prevent being infected?
 
Macs are pretty much PCs now. I'm sure Macs also have free AV and malware solutions so there should be no reason to NOT have some type of protection running.

I'd rather not see more PCs infected, doesn't matter if you're running a Mac, Windows OS, or whatever.
 
This is probably attributable to the fact that, if I'm recalling correctly, Apple hasn't yet released a Java update to plug the vulnerability for users on 10.5. Might be a fair number of Leopard machines still out there.
 
wonderfield said:
This is probably attributable to the fact that, if I'm recalling correctly, Apple hasn't yet released a Java update to plug the vulnerability for users on 10.5. Might be a fair number of Leopard machines still out there.
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According to the article, that's exactly what is occurring.

The infected computers have dropped from an estimated 600,000 to 100,000-140,000 and the remainder are expected to drop once those users finally update or upgrade their systems.
 
I have a Windows 7 box with dual GTX580's, a Macbook Pro, and an ESX server. The Mac just works, I like it.

As you guys are fond of pointing out, there are far more Windows users out there than Mac users. Hence I would conclude that there are many more stupid WIndows users out there than Mac users. Probably not many on this forum though :).
 
Rix said:
I have a Windows 7 box with dual GTX580's, a Macbook Pro, and an ESX server. The Mac just works, I like it.

As you guys are fond of pointing out, there are far more Windows users out there than Mac users. Hence I would conclude that there are many more stupid WIndows users out there than Mac users. Probably not many on this forum though :).
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Likewise, the number of knowlegeable PC users outstrips the entire Mac population.

The thing that's referred to is the ratio of knowlegeable vs ignorant users in each platform.

If you were to walk up to a random mac user, what are the odds of him being aware of what malware is and how to counter them, vs walking up to a random pc user.

In fact. What are the odds of you finding a windows PC that *doesn't* have some sort of anti-virus on it?
 
Trimlock said:
This is not a virus

LETS ARGUE SEMANTICS!

*runs*
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I haven't actually seen any kind of virus since WinXP. The 'viruses' we refer to now used to be called 'Trojans'. If you want to argue semantics, you can also say that there has been little or no Virus infections in the last fifteen years.
 
Sly said:
Likewise, the number of knowlegeable PC users outstrips the entire Mac population.

The thing that's referred to is the ratio of knowlegeable vs ignorant users in each platform.

If you were to walk up to a random mac user, what are the odds of him being aware of what malware is and how to counter them, vs walking up to a random pc user.

In fact. What are the odds of you finding a windows PC that *doesn't* have some sort of anti-virus on it?
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My opinion is that the largest vector for malware is warez and there just isn't a whole lot of that for the mac platform. not in the sense that there are scenes cracking DRM, which is where I suspect a lot of this stuff slips into people's computers.

In terms of your question nearly all the macs I see these days have windows installed. only a few girls' don't. now that macs have intel inside pretty much everyone owning one now either has windows or came from windows and is at least knowledgable about malware. everyone is aware of it it's not like some tech-savvy knowledge or something.

AV companies have been scaring people senseless about it for decades now so much so that our grandmas buy it. anyone under retirement age is using windows at work except for a tiny portion.

according to the article there isn't much the owners could do even if they knew and wanted to. the exploit is in a version of java that apple has no intention of updating. I suppose mac owners can either complain if they think that's unfair or upgrade their OS. Many of us in the PC realm have been saying the same thing to XP users for years but how many people have listened? Many here on these very forums refuse to upgrade from XP.
 
Sly said:
If you were to walk up to a random mac user, what are the odds of him being aware of what malware is and how to counter them, vs walking up to a random pc user.
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I'm thinking odds are better at a casino or playing the lottery.
 
Rix said:
I have a Windows 7 box with dual GTX580's, a Macbook Pro, and an ESX server. The Mac just works, I like it.

As you guys are fond of pointing out, there are far more Windows users out there than Mac users. Hence I would conclude that there are many more stupid WIndows users out there than Mac users. Probably not many on this forum though :).
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woha that's amazing. you have just totally convinced me to buy a Mac; cuz you see, i have a PC running W7 and it doesn't "just work".

like, i tried to send an email, and it didnt work! i tried to watch a film, and it didn't work! now i even got a virus and i have to buy a new PC !! hlpmpls
 
Sly said:
In fact. What are the odds of you finding a windows PC that *doesn't* have some sort of anti-virus on it?
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I work in a computer repair shop and let me tell you. atleast 20% don't have one and 50% that have it is expired.
 
LOCO LAPTOP said:
I work in a computer repair shop and let me tell you. atleast 20% don't have one and 50% that have it is expired.
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AT MINIMUM

I'd say typically every PC that comes in my shop for cleanup has either expired AV, AVG Free, or McAfee.
 
LOCO LAPTOP said:
I work in a computer repair shop and let me tell you. atleast 20% don't have one and 50% that have it is expired.
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So that would mean 80% are aware of what viruses are and has atleast some measure of protection. Thanks. And in Jorona case even the most ignorant user has some form of anti-virus.

Thanks for the numbers. How about mac's?
 
Sly said:
So that would mean 80% are aware of what viruses are...
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Well, no, not necessarily. You'll find that most PCs come with an anti-virus pre-installed and with X months of free updates. Users of these machines don't necessarily need to know what a virus is in order to not uninstall said anti-virus software. They may simply know (or, more likely, have heard) that viruses are bad and that anti-virus software is good. If users knew the full extent of how bad viruses can be, 50% of them would not allow their anti-virus update subscriptions to lapse.

Considering a number users here believe Flashback is a virus, I would suggest that very few Windows truly do know what a virus is.
 
wonderfield said:
Considering a number users here believe Flashback is a virus, I would suggest that very few Windows truly do know what a virus is.
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SEMANTICS!!!

God. You Mac zealots are so desperate to make "PC" look bad by calling everything a virus, regardless of what the most common variant of malware is on Windows... but will continue to deny, deny, deny, deny and deny that Mac is TARGETED.

Virus, trojan or whatever you got from that skanky ho you banged last night... It's all still bad to have. You only conflate the issue for brand loyalty and egotistical purposes to keep going on and on about "Windows gets Viruses, Macs don't".

Viruses aren't made for windows anymore, either. You know why? Because BOTNETS ARE PROFITABLE and disabling a machine is not!

Macs are in botnets now. Macs have trojans. You guys are targeted. Pretending that you're not by saying Macs don't get viruses is keeping your head superglued up inside your own arse.
 
I'm thinking if Apple provided a free auto-updated AV/Malware suite with Mac OS they could most likely get away with it without any anti-trust issues or whatnot.

Pretty much just an automatically included version of Microsoft Security Essentials.
 
techrat said:
God. You Mac zealots are so desperate to make "PC" look bad by calling everything a virus
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I didn't call anything a virus. What are you talking about?

techrat said:
...but will continue to deny, deny, deny, deny and deny that Mac is TARGETED.
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OS X is being targeted by malware authors, yes. That's factually correct.

Is the above really your notion of a denial? If so, I suggest that you look up the definition of the word "denial", in addition to the definition of the word "fact" I urged you to become acquainted with in a previous thread.
 
Riftsaw said:
I'm thinking if Apple provided a free auto-updated AV/Malware suite with Mac OS they could most likely get away with it without any anti-trust issues or whatnot.

Pretty much just an automatically included version of Microsoft Security Essentials.
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That's pretty much what they do now. The problem, as the article noted, is that the infected machines are running older versions of OSX that are no longer supported. They don't get the new functionality that you're pointing out macs should have (10.6+ machines do, though) and they aren't getting bug fixes of things that are exploitable.

As I mentioned earlier, windows xp and office 2007 users encounter similar issues and will have more as support is reduced further in the future. It's no longer an Apple issue in so far as people believe that they should not be obligated to patch old software. We don't hold 'nix distros responsible for their users not updating and some distros are focused for backporting security. Others are more bleeding edge and roll off support more quickly and older versions are left susceptible to attacks. similarly we don't blame MSFT for when users refuse to update their applications and/or OS or don't install service packs that close vulnerabilities. We don't expect MSFT to patch IE 5 or Windows 95...there's a period of time that everyone agrees is beyond the normal expected window of support. People may differ on what that window is exactly, but for the most part an OS that is three major revisions past and multiple iterations of minor revisions would generally fall outside that window in my experience.
 
wonderfield said:
Well, no, not necessarily. You'll find that most PCs come with an anti-virus pre-installed and with X months of free updates. Users of these machines don't necessarily need to know what a virus is in order to not uninstall said anti-virus software. They may simply know (or, more likely, have heard) that viruses are bad and that anti-virus software is good. If users knew the full extent of how bad viruses can be, 50% of them would not allow their anti-virus update subscriptions to lapse.

Considering a number users here believe Flashback is a virus, I would suggest that very few Windows truly do know what a virus is.
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Which shows vendors themselves giving even entry level pc users a leg up. And how does that compare to mac users? You guys readily gave pc, numbers what do mac users have to show for it?
 
I don't have any numbers for Macs. Close to 0%, I would suspect, but I'm really in no position to speculate.

Can you tell me where you're going with this?
 
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