Half a million Mac computers 'infected with malware'

[BERIGAN]

much ado about nothing???

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-17623422

[Shawn]

I installed the latest Java update from Apple today, I'm not going to lose any sleep over it.

[gmonahan]

Obviously, those of us with Windows were right all along.....

gregmo

[Shawn]

I doubt it. In a year of taking at least 30 tech support calls per day at Apple, I never ran across a single verifiable virus on the operating system. Zero.

My friend that worked tech support at Dell told me around 70% of his support calls were virus related.

[Christiern]

In my 27 years of using Macs every day, I have never experienced any kind of virus.

[Jazzmoose]

Stop it, you two; you're starting to convince me! I never had any virus problems until I moved here to Eastern Oregon. I don't see how location has anything to do with it, but there it is.

[cih]

We had a virus at work about 12 years ago.

The trouble with Macs (off topic) is when you want to get a new one to run alongside the others, and any software you had two years ago doesn't run properly on the newer system, and if you upgrade the software for the one machine, you need to do it for all - it costs a fortune.

[JSngry]

Some people say that the reason that Macs have been relatively virus-free over the years is simply that the hacking community was leaving them alone, preferring to go after The Microsoft Evil Empire.

Now that Apple is trying to create an iWorld, maybe that's changed. Maybe now we can see what the cyber thugs can do if they really try.

I think it's pretty naive to equate never being attacked with being impossible to be attacked. When it comes to this stuff, where there's a will, there's always a way.

No operating system is invulnerable. Cyber security, especially at the consumer level, will always be a reactive game.

Maccies, start reacting!

[mjzee]

I read an article on this exploit a few weeks ago. The problems is that the Flash Updater program got hacked, and that's the trojan horse (complete with Adobe logos) that's used. If I get a notice to update Flash, I go to the Adobe website.

[Pete C]

I work in a Mac environment and use a PC at home. I will say, as far as viruses are concerned, that "never" is a myth for Macs. The tech people at work do real-time monitoring of the network, and one day our on-site tech guy comes over to my desk frantically telling me he got a call from the help desk that my computer had some kind of virus or malware and that they'd have to quarantine and reimage my machine to protect the network, so so much for never.

[Christiern]

I don't think anyone here has said NEVER, in the general sense. I said that I had never experienced it in 27 years...I

Jim, being the innate contrarian, says "I think it's pretty naive to equate never being attacked with being impossible to be attacked." That's just typical of him. Unless it's in the original post (I don't ever as much as peek at Conrad's nonsense), I don't think anyone in this thread has exhibited naïvité.

Macs do get attacked, but not as often as Windows systems, and the Apple people are quick to post OS upgrades.

[Pete C]

But Jim does make a valid point: the bad actors concentrate on the systems with the highest concentration of users.

[sonnymax]

I don't need "never'. "Rarely ever" is fine with me, and it's a helluva lot better than "forever" with a PC.

[BERIGAN]

I don't think anyone here has said NEVER, in the general sense. I said that I had never experienced it in 27 years...I

Jim, being the innate contrarian, says "I think it's pretty naive to equate never being attacked with being impossible to be attacked." That's just typical of him. Unless it's in the original post (I don't ever as much as peek at Conrad's nonsense), I don't think anyone in this thread has exhibited naïvité.

Macs do get attacked, but not as often as Windows systems, and the Apple people are quick to post OS upgrades.

Λ

Plays well with others!

[JSngry]

My experience with iWorlders is in no way limited to the world of the Organissimo community. There is a real world out there, ya' know? and it's full of arrogant Macheads who are convinced that The Book of Jobs is a manual for living a trouble-free life forever more, world without end, amen.

They're like the Americans who thought that we could never be attacked, or that the Japanese could never build better cars than us, or that drugs could never find thier way into our schools because we're better than that. Not just that no real attempt had yet been made to do these things,but that these things genetically could not happen.

Well, they can. America can get blown up, Japan can make hella better cars than America, you can buy heroin in your school, and, yes, Macs can get hacked.

Some things are harder to do than other things, but when the will gets strong enough, a way is damn near always found.

Apple is getting pretty damn arrogant with their iEverything, the same way that Microsoft did a few decades ago, and their market has always had its fair share of "peacocks", First, Newest, Best, Oh, the phone doesn't work under my chin, Ha Ha, oh well, I'll get the next one a month or two from now. I'd not be surprised but that Apple has not pissed off enough cyber-goons that they've decided to play the" Ok, let's get busy on THIS" game. And guess what - they found a way in. Because there's always a way in.

So for all you good ,decent iPeoples who just buy the stuff because it works the way you like for it to work (and I'm sure that that's everybody on the O-Board), hey, carry on! But for all the iSnobs, the Mac-istas, the ones in the rest of the world who would never drink a domestic been or buy an Android phone (and would rather be caught dead than to do so)...HA HA HA!

And don't be surprised if there's more to come.

[Christiern]

But Jim does make a valid point: the bad actors concentrate on the systems with the highest concentration of users.

That's a no-brainer, so obvious that most people don't see a reason to bring it up. Jim is obsessively anti-Apple, and thus a part of a rapidly fading breed. Read his post below, where he blathers on about "arrogant Macheads," "i-Snobs," "Mac-istas," etc. . It was always silly, but it has become increasingly so in recent years—years that seem to have passed Jim by.

They gloated when Apple was brought to the edge of extinction by Sculley, a former Pepsi Cola exec, and other dabblers. Steve Jobs came back and made it the giant it is today. People like Jim hate that, but they had better get used to it. I saw some news footage of Bill GAtes the other night, he was visiting one of the many schools that have benefited from his philanthropic work—it was full of laptops with a white apple on each lid!

Apropos Gates, he deserves a lot of high praise for all the good he and his wife are doing with their money. Steve Jobs was a remarkable visionary whose ideas and ability to implement them changed much in the world, but he was the industry scrooge. I admire both, but—all things considered–I think Gates has the edge.

[JSngry]

I love my iPod, except when it skips and/or freezes, which it does fairly often.

I'm sure I'd love a Mac if I had one, but I don't, and don't need to. I can do what I want and need to do with my PC, and if/when something goes wrong, I can either fix it myself or get it fixed fast and (usually) cheap.

In other words, it works. Good enough for me. It's a computer, not a penis.

[Quincy]

Note the malware came through Java. Java and Adobe Flash tend to be the main causes of Apple OS hiccups over the years. Flash bad behavior, especially regarding battery life is supposedly the main reason why it wasn't allowed on iPhones & iPads.

Of course for an average user it doesn't matter whether the malware attacked through a weakness in the OS or something that comes along with the computer (although even the computers no longer come w/ Flash installed). But just as a person has to know about the phishing tricks used by criminals pretending to be your bank or credit card company, a computer user needs to realize that software updates should only be downloaded from trusted sites.

I'm not a cultist (though I was a bit of an Amiga one) as I didn't own an Apple until Jaguar came out. I didn't bother w/ anti-virus until maybe 3 years when a free version became available. Running it the 1st time on a MacBook that had heavily used for a couple of years revealed 2 minor-league viruses, also of the Java kind that needed a Windows file to do anything. In the 2 years since it hasn't bumped into anything yet.

Apple was slow to respond this however. There's a 2nd patch out today for users of Lion.

[sonnymax]

I love my iPod, except when it skips and/or freezes, which it does fairly often.

I'm sure I'd love a Mac if I had one, but I don't, and don't need to. I can do what I want and need to do with my PC, and if/when something goes wrong, I can either fix it myself or get it fixed fast and (usually) cheap.

In other words, it works. Good enough for me. It's a computer, not a penis.

If truth be told, I could probably do everything I need to do on a PC. But I own a Mac because it's pretty, it's looks cool, it's superior to a PC in every way, and using a Mac makes me a better person than you are.

[Quincy]

It's a computer, not a penis.

Funny you mention penis. The first virus I ever encountered was transfered via a shared 3 1/2 inch disc. It turned the Amiga cursor arrow into a penis.

[Shawn]

I'm in no way a "Mac Addict". I worked on PCs (and did tech support for them) for over 15 years. I dealt with the endless nightmare of crashes, bad operating system design, "service pack" installations, viruses, etc.

Then I switched to Mac a few years ago and my life became INFINITELY easier. After wasting 15 years of my life "TURD POLISHING" with Windows...I've never been happier.

I don't use Macs because I want to be part of a cult, I use them because they just WORK when they are supposed to.

[JSngry]

I'm in no way a "Mac Addict". I worked on PCs (and did tech support for them) for over 15 years. I dealt with the endless nightmare of crashes, bad operating system design, "service pack" installations, viruses, etc.

Then I switched to Mac a few years ago and my life became INFINITELY easier. After wasting 15 years of my life "TURD POLISHING" with Windows...I've never been happier.

I don't use Macs because I want to be part of a cult, I use them because they just WORK when they are supposed to.

Would that there were more like you...

I've had to be more than an hour late back to work because I was having lunch with some Mac-cultists who had to stop by the apple Store to just touch a new model iPad. Another group kept coming up to me to show me there new iPhones, how neat they were. Me, I'm not a "phone guy" at all. If it makes and receives calls, that's good enough for me. I don't even text unless absolutely necessary. But these folks were just babbling on and on about Jobs this and Apple that, and....BARF, ya' know? The day Jobs died, some guy comes up to me all weepy, talking about "think about how many ways that man changed YOUR life". I was, like, yeah, I have an iPod now. What else? He got offended, and I had a good laugh. Go cry somewhere else, asshole, I have work to do. On a PC.

That kind of Apple fetishism is far from uncommon, at least as I experience it. There's a lot of people out there, myself included, who do what they do just fine on a PC, and there's plenty people who get along just fine on a Mac. If/when I need to switch, I will, In the meantime, some of the Jehovah's Witnesses who come to my door are easier to deal with than some of the Macientologists I run into. It's them I wish viruses, open sores, and loss of firstborn.

If truth be told, I could probably do everything I need to do on a PC. But I own a Mac because it's pretty, it's looks cool, it's superior to a PC in every way, and using a Mac makes me a better person than you are.

You'd be an even better better person than me if you ran LINUX.

[papsrus]

"Half a million" infected Apple computers sounds like a big number (I guess), but is it really?

So, lets say a conservative estimate puts the number of macs sold since 2006 at ~50,000,000 (an average of somewhere north of 2 million per quarter since 2006). The number of macs that may be infected with this malware is about 1.2% of just those macs sold since 2006. Factor in all macs sold prior to 2006 that are still in use, and I'm guessing the percentage of infected computers approaches the realm of being statistically meaningless.

Course, if yours is one of the 600,000 infected, all that doesn't matter.

[Matthew]

No problem here, and I just bought a MacBook Air about a six weeks ago for travel, and I LOVE it.

[robertoart]

I'm in no way a "Mac Addict". I worked on PCs (and did tech support for them) for over 15 years. I dealt with the endless nightmare of crashes, bad operating system design, "service pack" installations, viruses, etc.

Then I switched to Mac a few years ago and my life became INFINITELY easier. After wasting 15 years of my life "TURD POLISHING" with Windows...I've never been happier.

I don't use Macs because I want to be part of a cult, I use them because they just WORK when they are supposed to.

Would that there were more like you...

I've had to be more than an hour late back to work because I was having lunch with some Mac-cultists who had to stop by the apple Store to just touch a new model iPad. Another group kept coming up to me to show me there new iPhones, how neat they were. Me, I'm not a "phone guy" at all. If it makes and receives calls, that's good enough for me. I don't even text unless absolutely necessary. But these folks were just babbling on and on about Jobs this and Apple that, and....BARF, ya' know? The day Jobs died, some guy comes up to me all weepy, talking about "think about how many ways that man changed YOUR life". I was, like, yeah, I have an iPod now. What else? He got offended, and I had a good laugh. Go cry somewhere else, asshole, I have work to do. On a PC.

That kind of Apple fetishism is far from uncommon, at least as I experience it. There's a lot of people out there, myself included, who do what they do just fine on a PC, and there's plenty people who get along just fine on a Mac. If/when I need to switch, I will, In the meantime, some of the Jehovah's Witnesses who come to my door are easier to deal with than some of the Macientologists I run into. It's them I wish viruses, open sores, and loss of firstborn.

If truth be told, I could probably do everything I need to do on a PC. But I own a Mac because it's pretty, it's looks cool, it's superior to a PC in every way, and using a Mac makes me a better person than you are.

You'd be an even better better person than me if you ran LINUX.