Mac attacks rare, but real

There’s no question that, today, Macs are much more secure than Windows based PCs. This is thanks to a more secure operating system, but it has also been because of a smaller user base that presented a smaller target for malware and virus writers. However the smaller user base argument is not necessarily the case today, thanks to the rise and rise of the iPod and the iMac.

Why bother if hardly anyone would get affected? What virus/malware writing glory is there in that? But the invasion of Mac malware began some time ago, and both everyday and self-righteously invincible Mac users need to be aware: your Mac is not secure, and neither is anything else in the Universe.

When Apple tried to blame Microsoft for a Windows virus appearing on new iPod Video 5G models from September 12 for a couple of weeks, the blogosphere reacted. Where was Apple’s integrity, they asked?

Of course, Apple apologised, but trying to shift the blame only brought the spotlight firmly onto Apple, as has been the case all week. A number of articles, besides my own ‘Virus scare a lesson for Apple’ article, also dared to question the myth of total Mac invulnerability to viruses and spyware, and tried to gently remind Apple users that owning a Mac does not bestow a shield of invincibility around its owner, no matter how much you believe it to be true.

For this, I was slammed by self-righteous Mac owners around the world. How dare I question the Mac OS? What qualifications did I have? I should be barred from ever writing articles about the Mac ever again… and so on, and so forth. If anyone ever thought the PC vs Mac battles had ever subsided, here was direct proof that nothing had changed in years. John Dvorak knows how I feel, and I know Stan Beer does too.

Of course, few of my detractors have any knowledge of my technological expertise gained over more than two decades. The very, very short version is that I have been around computers since the age of four in 1979, two years before the introduction of the IBM PC, and it was thanks to the foresight of my father who chose to buy one and bring it home. It was the Exidy Sorcerer (do a search on Google!)

My second computer was an Apple ][ clone. Since then, I have owned dozens of computers, used all the major operating systems, fixed innumerable problems for people on a range of computing platforms, and have helped a lot of Mac owners especially in the past three or so years with computing questions and issues, including software installation, backup, printer setups and the like.

In that time, I have helped to fix precisely zero viruses or malware outbreaks on a Mac system, but after experiencing issues with software or just trying to make things worked, I quickly realised the warm glow that Mac OS X was giving me was just showing me that problems exist on a Mac – they’re just different to the ones PC owners are used to.

Being security conscious for some time now, when a friend purchased a G5 iMac at least a couple of years ago, I received a review copy of Norton Internet Security 3.0 for Mac (an older superseded version nowadays), and installing this turned out to be a of a nightmare – it just wouldn’t install properly.

Symantec, at their launch of Internet Security 2007 for PCs advised me that their latest version for Macs was vastly improved, and had a massive following in Japan. I’ve requested a copy to see for myself. Sophos also make a well regarded security package for Mac users, and I wholeheartedly recommend you install one.

Why? So you stop being the carrier for Windows viruses and other malware that can pass through your system – be it emails, Word documents, Powerpoint or other infected files. Macs may be invulnerable to these Windows vulnerabilities, but if you’re passing on the problem, instead of being part of the solution, you’re hardly helping.

Of course, some Mac users will not care – the attitude will be to serve the PC owners right. But not only is that not the right attitude to take, despite the fact you need to pay money to help protect others which some will feel is not their problem, having an Internet security package on your Mac will nevertheless help to protect you from the very small number of vulnerabilities out there, and new ones as they are found (and updated into that Internet security package).

Seeing as I’m soon to buy a Core 2 Duo MacBook Pro (basically, as soon as they are released), I hardly want to encourage malware writers to start targeting the Mac. But they hardly need any encouragement from me, they’re already self motivated.

The Intel-Mac’s ability to run multiple operating systems at the same time is the main attraction for me – and no doubt many others as well. Will I enjoy having a relatively safer experience when using the Mac side of things? Of course. But I’ll be investing in Sophos or Norton Internet Security for my Mac, as well as investigating what other alternatives are out there. I certainly won’t just blindly accept that Apple knows best and has everything sorted out for me. That’d be like trusting the Government has everything sorted – and I’m hardly about to start doing that.

What I have noticed, both in reports from fellow Australian technology journalists, and from my own experiences helping Mac owning friends with issues, is that what usually takes out a Mac is a hardware failure.

Stories of multiple items of hardware failing within a computer or notebook over a year long period have been recounted to me by Apple customers, and I’ve seen it happen with my own eyes on friend’s computers. Three or four week waiting times then ensued. What does one do when one’s home or business computer is taken away for repairs? Each time, the wait and delay proved traumatic.

Of course, bad customer experience is a story we can all tell and hear about dozens of different companies. Apple is just one among many, and there are plenty of shining examples of Apple technology working wonderfully.

I’ve read many reports of different iPod flavours deciding to fail. So far, I’ve owned three iPods (the 1^st-gen 4Gb nano, which now belongs to my brother, a 60Gb 5G iPod and now the new 2^nd-gen 8Gb nano) and have not had any problems with any of them. I couldn’t be happier with my iPod experience, and hope that doesn’t change anytime soon.

When it comes to the Mac operating system, some readers were very eager to point out, as if I didn’t know, that Mac OS X is based on Unix, an operating system older than Microsoft. I happily acknowledge that it is well known for being more secure that Microsoft’s different versions of Windows.

Where a Windows PC can find a virus installing itself without permission, Mac users must authorise the installation of any new program with their password. Simple security measures like this one have helped to make the difference, and Microsoft has taken note – Windows Vista is coming with similar functionality, although in typical Microsoft style, theirs lacks the simplicity and unobtrusiveness of the Apple model.

But let’s put aside Mac OS X’s inherent security advantages for a moment. If the Mac OS was totally 100% secure from all hack attacks and malicious software that you could be tricked into installing onto your computer, you wouldn’t see security patches and updates through the Mac’s own software updating system, or every time there is a new version of OS X. But do a bit of research, and you’ll discover security updates are there. They’re there because they have to be – Apple is being responsible to its users.

Don’t believe me? Fine – click on this page to see some recent security updates for yourself. This Apple downloads page lists lots of updates for different Apple programs, and while they’re not all security updates, by now you get the idea.

I also find it curious, oh Mac zealots, to discover that a search for “Mac OS X viruses” on Google brings up any results at all. According to thrust of some responses to the original article, I shouldn’t have been able to find anything at all. But for some unusual reason there are results, perhaps there are viruses out there after all. Or maybe it’s just a conspiracy by Windows users out to get Apple.

Back to a bit of seriousness however, CNN’s recent article ‘Security analysts: Mac attacks rare but may rise’  is quick to point out that the chance of Mac users being affected by vulnerabilities and attacks is slim, but that this is changing. To quote from the article, “Oliver Friedrichs, director of security response at Symantec, a leading anti-virus software vendor, said 72 vulnerabilities were discovered in the Mac’s OS X operating system in 2006, up from 19 in 2004. And Symantec identified six threats of malicious code written for the Mac OS X operating system in the first half of 2006, versus zero in the second half of 2005 and two the year before that. “It doesn’t mean more bugs are being introduced,” Friedrichs said. “But it means attackers are increasingly looking at it.”

Security companies discovered the Mac OSX/Leap-A virus earlier this year. News of this was delivered by other security companies as well, and despite protestations by some that this was not a real ‘virus’, the facts proved otherwise. At the Sophos website, Graham Cluley, senior technology consultant for Sophos said that “Some owners of Mac computers have held the belief that Mac OS X is incapable of harboring computer viruses, but Leap-A will leave them shellshocked, as it shows that the malware threat on Mac OS X is real”.

Cluley continues: “Mac users shouldn’t think it’s okay to lie back and not worry about viruses. This is the first real virus for the Mac OS X platform,” continued Cluley. “Apple Mac users need to be just as careful running unknown or unsolicited code on their computers as their friends and colleagues running Windows.”

So, while you may have an easier time with computing on the Mac, whether it be through a more intuitive graphical user interface or more hardiness to computer security vulnerabilities, you just can’t afford to be complacent about security. Not in the online world, and not in the offline world. It’s just like not being able to afford complacency about regular timely backups.

Because if you are, one day, you are guaranteed to wake up and find one of the following, no matter what operating system or computing platform you use. This list is in no particular order, and when it happens, unless you are prepared with security software and importantly a recent, up-to-date backup, you’ll find your computing world and access to your data changes drastically in a heartbeat.

1. Your hard drive crashes (it can happen on Mac too!)
2. Other hardware failure strikes
3. A virus attack (viruses exist on the Mac! This cannot be denied)
4. Computer theft
5. A backup that isn’t recent enough
6. A backup hard disk that was stolen along with the computer (a second off-site backup and/or a secure online backup is recommended)
7. Your bubble of invincibility has an unscheduled service interruption and goes pop.
8. Something else that unexpectedly pops up to cause chaos. It’s called life, and stuff happens.

The question is whether or not you will let it happen to you. Get a Mac backup program and a large external hard drive, and set it to backup automatically or at the very least, backup manually on a regular basis. Investigate Internet security software on Macs to protect yourself, and others.

Make sure you check that your Mac has updated itself, even if this is supposed to be set to automatic. Make sure to check all your software is suitably updated. And remember that nothing is secure in this world, it can only be made as secure as can be, but that’s never a 100% iron-clad guarantee. Since when did the EULA (end-user licensing agreement) of any software package ever offer that, anyway?

Happy Mac computing, Mac users. Looking forward to joining you soon, and enjoying the pure operating system choice today’s Macs deliver in spades. Also looking forward to all of the new releases that Steve Jobs has just hinted about in claiming that 2007 will be one of the most exciting in history. Let’s just hope it’s for the right reasons for Apple, and not the wrong ones!