Mac/Windows Viruses?

Hi,

Im just enquiring to what would happen if I downloaded a program which had a virus on it (for windows) on a mac.
Do Mac's detect Viruses? Or would the virus simply not do anything to the Mac?

It wouldn't do anything because windows exe files will not run in OSX/Mac. However you could pass the virus on if you were to email it to a Windows friend.

If you have virus software running (which isn't necessary) it should detect it.

But it can't do anything to your Mac. It wouldn't be able to do anything to OS X because it's written for Windows, and to OS X, that means it's just a nonsensical jumble of 1's and 0's. At most, it'd be able to infect your Windows partition if you have one, but that's all.

Your OS X will be perfectly safe.

Thanks for answering the question, just one more.

How would I know if my Mac has a virus/trojan, then how would I remove it as I understand Mac's dont require virus protection/firewalls.

Benjir said:

I understand Mac's dont require virus protection/firewalls.

Click to expand...

ANY computer connected to the internet should have a firewall set up on it.

Thouh in most cases the firewall built into your router is more then enough and the firewall in your machine is redundant.

Benjir said:

Thanks for answering the question, just one more.

How would I know if my Mac has a virus/trojan, then how would I remove it as I understand Mac's dont require virus protection/firewalls.

Click to expand...

There really aren't any real viruses out there for Macs. There are one or two trojans out there, but you literally have to install them yourselves, i.e. you have to enter your admin password to let the trojan install. And you'll only come across this if you visit lots of porn sites with strangely formatted videos. You'd have to be braindead to infect yourself with a Mac trojan.

But if you want, download ClamXav. It's a free virus scanner for Mac. Right now, it doesn't really have anything to look for, since there are no OS X viruses, but it will find Windows viruses, which is really only important if you have a Windows partition or if you don't want to pass them on to other Windows friends.

Also, if you want to stay on the side of caution, go to System Pref -> Sharing -> Firewall and turn it on.