[Macworld]

Post your comments for McAfee: Apple No Longer Flying under the Security Radar here

[danmusician]

When the little boy crying wolf is also trying to sell me a can of wolf repellent, it's hard to take his warnings seriously.

I am very tired of the "Mac market share is too small to attack argument." Apple and Mac users have been SO arrogant about the Mac security, I can't believe someone hasn't hacked it just to shut people up.

This post has been edited by danmusician: 28 December 2010 - 10:48 AM

[cam2099]

Man your battle stations!

[bastion]

I'd like to see any data actually supporting these projections. Absent that, this looks like a mix of fear-mongering and strawman argument. I'd like, for example, an explanation of the "increasing sophistication" they're seeing as well as evidence supporting actual increased volume of attacks or percentage of successes.

It's certainly true that Mac OS X is not impervious to attacks. It's disingenuous to focus on the ignorant minority claiming otherwise while ignoring the fundamental question of ROI for attacking Macs in comparison to other platforms or devices which are easier and/or more rewarding to compromise.

[tim763]

Ahhh, the ol' market share too small to attack argument. Funny how every year we hear this will be the year the Mac falls - what is that about 20 years now? And yet, enterprising hackers still can't be bothered to attack and rip off all those "hipsters with money to blow". No, gotta go for those NSA servers and the grandmother knitting groups on their PC's. I don't who is more dumb - the people who believe their Macs are invulnerable to attacks, the people who give away their credit card numbers and PINs, or 'journalists' who keep telling us this is the year that Mac market share is finally large enough to wholesale attack.

[synsoniq]

Definitely a bunch of FUD on the part of a company only standing to benefit from said BS. Get a hold of me once there's an actual virus on OS X.

[cam2099]

At least when Sophos said the same thing, they have a free offering.

[JakeB]

Hey, buddy, your tire looks a little flat. Don't want a blow out on the freeway.

Want me to replace it for ya?

[michaelbirdtx]

Another year, another disengenuous Mac "security" warning from a sleazy "security" vendor. Move along, nothing to see here.

[michaelant]

"If McAfee is right, 2011 could be a bittersweet year for Apple and Apple fans."

Yeah right, McAfee. You need to make money, I get it.

What I'd like to see is an article one year from now, evaluating the bittersweet quality or not of 2011. Think we'll see that?

[ZlatkoPavic]

oh, please... same sh** every year... yawn!

[microfud]

The only thing noteworthy here is that Macworld runs this same story every year and cites the exact same sources. The result at the end of the year is always the same, nothing doing in the way of Mac virus or trojans.

I'd suggest that Macworld could save a lot of money by having someone write a script to generate this story automatically based on the annual press release put out by the antivirus companies.

[wingsy]

"The popularity of iPads and iPhones in business environments and the easy portability of malicious code between them..."

Good grief Charlie Brown, such BS. Show me one instance of where & how one iOS device can easily transfer program code to another. The ONLY way to get code in it is to jailbreak your phone (and then all bets are off) or get it through the App Store. A third way, direct from your IT department is also available, and maybe this is where they think the malware will come from?

But I get the message from McAfee... I need to buy their product so they can make more money.

[jhmaughan]

Well, I suppose this is true: "McAfee Labs saw malware of increasing sophistication that targets Mac this year; we expect this trend to increase in 2011...We anticipate threats of data and identity exposure will become more pronounced."

You know, from one threat to two...

Though it's probably worth mentioning that the threats that have had any modicum of success were those that tricked a user into doing something stupid. I suppose those threats are always becoming more sophisticated so hopefully users will become more sophisticated.