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Apple Computing Products:
macOS - Operating System
Viruses on a Mac?
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<blockquote data-quote="chas_m" data-source="post: 1031440"><p>Reasons Macs Don't Get Viruses:</p><p></p><p>1. UNIX core. This is the main reason.</p><p>2. Root-level sandboxing of apps from one another.</p><p>3. User is not running as root</p><p>4. User permission required for installation of any system-altering programs</p><p>5. Programs cannot gain admin or root status without user's permission</p><p></p><p>The five reasons above are actually all tied to the #1 reason -- the UNIX core.</p><p></p><p>6. Apple is very vigilant about threats and relatively quick (for a large corporation) at issuing fixes.</p><p></p><p>7. Strong user community acts as a line of defense. When a "porn codec" turned out to be malware, the community spread the warning far and wide, so it never had much chance to sucker dumb users, couldn't spread as Win viruses do, etc.</p><p></p><p>8. Most viruses are written explicitly to take advantage of weaknesses in Windows. Mac OS X isn't Windows, thus doesn't have those weaknesses, and (again see #1) doesn't have many serious weaknesses of its own.</p><p></p><p>In addition, there are the reasons you mention.</p><p></p><p>For this and other reasons, not only have we gone 10 years without a virus, I don't see any way for viruses to become threats to the Mac platform in the foreseeable future. OS X isn't impervious to all forms of security weakness, but is robust enough to make such ventures very difficult to be effective or to spread, thus killing the entire reasons viruses exist in the first place.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="chas_m, post: 1031440"] Reasons Macs Don't Get Viruses: 1. UNIX core. This is the main reason. 2. Root-level sandboxing of apps from one another. 3. User is not running as root 4. User permission required for installation of any system-altering programs 5. Programs cannot gain admin or root status without user's permission The five reasons above are actually all tied to the #1 reason -- the UNIX core. 6. Apple is very vigilant about threats and relatively quick (for a large corporation) at issuing fixes. 7. Strong user community acts as a line of defense. When a "porn codec" turned out to be malware, the community spread the warning far and wide, so it never had much chance to sucker dumb users, couldn't spread as Win viruses do, etc. 8. Most viruses are written explicitly to take advantage of weaknesses in Windows. Mac OS X isn't Windows, thus doesn't have those weaknesses, and (again see #1) doesn't have many serious weaknesses of its own. In addition, there are the reasons you mention. For this and other reasons, not only have we gone 10 years without a virus, I don't see any way for viruses to become threats to the Mac platform in the foreseeable future. OS X isn't impervious to all forms of security weakness, but is robust enough to make such ventures very difficult to be effective or to spread, thus killing the entire reasons viruses exist in the first place. [/QUOTE]
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Apple Computing Products:
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Viruses on a Mac?
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