Mac OS X Devoid of Malware, Vexing Experts

Mac OS X by Apple remains almost totally free of any kind of malware threat inspite of being there in the market from several years, a considerable share in the market, and even a whole month focused on highlighting its vulnerabilities, as reported by itnews on March 22, 2007.

Security experts are uncertain why there is no flaw in the Mac. Marius van Oers, Security Researcher, pointed out in an article for McAfee Avert Labs blog, that Mac malware is quite non-existent right now.

Experts say that right now, there're 236,000 known malevolent malware items and most of them are meant for the MS-Windows environment.

The OS X is based on the Unix/BSD code that is quite well known. van Oers pointed out that there're over 700 malware items targeting various Linux and Unix platforms.

Currently, the known volume of Mac malware counts less than 7, almost non-existent. For older versions of the Mac, there're 69 known malevolent items, alongwith 8 items for Mac HC, which used hypercard script extensions that had installed manually as an 'add on' package.

There are a plenty of flaws in OS X. The latest update released by Apple patched over 30 security holes. They said that it is not more safe that other OS, yet no malware writer writes for the platform, as reported by hardocp on March 21, 2007.

van Oers said that with a projected OS X share of around 5% on desktops, they would anticipate to witness more malware for OS X.

He added that Windows by Microsoft dominates the desktop market and this is the reason why most of the malicious software is written for Windows. Also, before Vista, the several editions of Windows were quite wide open, fully accessible, making it comparatively easier to exploit by malware, as reported by itnews on March 22, 2007.

On March 21, 2007, Oers, while speaking to computing.co.uk explained that these days, malware authors prefer to focus on targeted attacks rather than massive strikes.

It has been noted that source code is offered for several components on OS X systems. This can make the task of writing malevolent exploits/code easier for malware writers.

This sound more troublesome then the malware demonstrators which OS X threats of Macarena and Leap really represent. However, it's pretty much clear that OS X malware isn't cropping up yet.

Related article: Mac Flaw Exploited to Hack Computer at Vancouver Conference

» SPAMfighter News - 3/27/2007