More evidence Apple is rife with security vulnerabilities, just like Windows
Posted on | August 28, 2009 | 2 comments
Affirming that Internet-connected Macs are just as rife with security flaws as Windows computers – albeit not nearly as heavily attacked as PCs — Apple has quietly added a malicious software detection feature to its new Snow Leopard operating system and Safari browser. USA Today’s Ed Baig discusses this in this review of Snow Leopard.
It wasn’t too long ago that if I wrote anything even remotely implying that Macs were susceptible to cyber attacks, I would get inundated by flame email from Apple users. And as recently as mid 2007, Apple continued to run TV commercials touting Macs’ supposed security edge over Windows.
(UPDATE 30-Aug-09: Apple continues to tout security as intrinsically more robust on Macs, albeit not as overtly; in its current batch of TV commercials, like this one, actor Patrick Warburton riffs off the facile boyfriend character he played on Seinfeld to reassure a buyer looking for a computer that “works without thousands of viruses” that PCs are okay.)
But what’s been happening for close to two years now is that some of the same grey hat security researchers who have flushed out tens of thousands of vulnerabilities in Windows, Internet Explorer and Office are increasingly turning their scrutiny to Apple’s Mac OS X, iTunes and Quicktime media players and Safari browser as well as to Adobe’s Acrobat Reader and Flash video player.
Growth market for Mac protection
So, of course, security vendors are anticipating a growth market in tools and services to mitigate Mac attacks. Antivirus giants Symantec and McAffee both now offer antivirus suites for Macs.
And a firm called Identity Finder is pushing to get word out about a subscription service that will searche your PC or Mac for social security numbers, credit card numbers, passwords, and other confidential information inside documents, spreadsheets, e-mails, web browsers, and hidden areas of computers. IdentityFinder’s tool than gives you the option to securely delete the data or protect it with encryption.
“It’s clear Macs are being targeted more and more by identity thieves and hackers,” says Todd Feinman, CEO of Identity Finder. “We built Identity Finder for the Mac because people need to find and protect their personal information regardless of what computer they store it on.”
A one year subscription to Identity Finder 4.0 for PCs cost $19.95 for one computer or $39.95 for up to three PCs; the Mac version cost $9.99 for one machine and $29.94 for three.
Photo of Todd Feinman
–by Byron Acohido
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Agree. The reason whey there is not more malware for Macs is due to simple economics. Being a essentially a business as it is today, hackers dedicate their effort to where the risk / reward / effort ratio plays best for them.
As we see Mac’s market share increasing, malware for macs will undoubtly increase as well and Mac users will have to face the fact that, equally to Windows users, they need to be protected as well.
Comment by Juan Santana — 8/28/2009 @ 2:11 pm
oops! was just doing a google search on electric gates for a project at work and somehow came to your site. Much more interesting than what I’m supposed to be doing so thanks for the diversion I guess lol. Will be back!
Comment by electric gates — 11/30/2009 @ 8:01 am