Anti-virus for mac?

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roninsmurf

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kinda a followup to my firewall question -- in which i learned: No Norton!

so should i stay away from Norton Anti-Virus as well?
what's a good anti-virus program for mac osx?

i'm
g4 15" osx 10.4.3
thanks, hombres. you guys have been awesome.
 
roninsmurf said:
kinda a followup to my firewall question -- in which i learned: No Norton!

so should i stay away from Norton Anti-Virus as well?
what's a good anti-virus program for mac osx?

i'm
g4 15" osx 10.4.3
thanks, hombres. you guys have been awesome.
Click to expand...

I've used both Norton and Sophos and liked them both.
 
Unless you are streaming a lot of information through the net to a PC or from one PC to another via files or a network, local or not, don't waste your money on virus software. (and you should only do it in the above case if you are worried about sending a virus from one of the PCs to the other... won't hurt your mac)

I know this is an issue with some people, but it shouldn't be. I've been mac-ing for 8 years on multiple systems, all online, all broadband and I've never even seen evidense of a FAILED virus let alone one that did anything nasty.

Companies are getting rich on your dollar by writing software to save you from viruses which don't exist.

(though having just said this, I'm sure someone's writing one just for me : D )
 
huh. so has NOone ever gotten a virus on a mac?? that's pretty incredible.

is that just not the Way Of The Virus Writer, to hack at macs? why not? interesting.

sounds like i can download Norton Av if i like, but probably shouldn't have it on "auto protect" - waste of time?
 
The web site MacFixIt has had reports of Norton automatic protection messing some current OS X machines. The software still work, just leave Auto Protect turned off until they update it.
 
ClamXAV is for virus identification only... it will not remove viruses from your system if it detects them, IIRC.

And yes, Macintosh computers have been the victim of a handful of nasty viruses -- namely the Autostart and DelDB viruses, but those were under the classic OS. Earlier on in Apple's history, there were several viruses for Apple-branded computers (not Macintosh computers, though).

Mac OS X has never been the victim of a virus.
 
'... huh. so has no one ever gotten a virus on a mac??', with MacOS X - no.

Sometime in the early 1990's, running System 7.x, I had around 26 or so Mac viruses (1) stored on the boot hard disk drive, hdd. Believe it or not, the files were selected, and yes ... launched. After using 'Disinfectant' (freeware) only one file remained affected - 'Finder'. Once booted to another volume, the infected 'Finder' was deleted and a clean 'Finder' was copied over, and the Mac booted to its internal hdd.

(1) - ANTI B, CDEF, CODE 1, CODE 252, INIT, INIT 17, INIT 1984, INIT 29, INIT 9403, INIT-M, MBDF, MBDF A, MBDF B, MDEF, MDEF B, MDEF C, MDEF D, nVIR, nVIR A, nVIR B, T4, T4-C, WDEF, WDEF B, ZUC, ZUC B, ZUC C, etc.
 
roninsmurf said:
huh. so has NOone ever gotten a virus on a mac?? that's pretty incredible.

is that just not the Way Of The Virus Writer, to hack at macs? why not? interesting.
Click to expand...
There are several reaons why Macs are not subject to virus attack. Among them are:
  1. Macs are a smaller target than Wintel machines
  2. OS X is based on the open source BSD Unix which, like most Unix variants, was developed as a secure multiuser operating system from scratch and has been hammered on and tweaked by literally generations of software developers who have always strived to make BSD Unix a hard target to attack.
  3. Mac operating systems have always been hard targets for virus writers and spammers so why attack the Mac when Windows is a much larger and softer target.
  4. Have you tried adding anything to your system lately when your were not logged on as an admin user and/or did not have an admin password?
There have been a couple of proto-viruses (worms and trojans)reported, but no one was able to figure out how to exploit them before Apple plugged the vulnerability. I forget whether it was Norton Firewall or AV that recently created a vulnerability in OS X but Symantec got a fix out for that quickly.

Microsoft Office for Mac is vulnerable to some Macro viruses, but those cannot infect OS X itself and I have never heard of any Mac user suffering any damage from one although I suppose it could happen. The biggest danger is getting an email attachment that is infected with a virus and forwarding it to a PC using friend. (Do friends let friends use PCs?) Other than that since anti-virus software works by detecting virus signatures and since there are no OS X virus signatures to detect about all any anti-virus software can do on the Mac is help prevent the spread of Windows virii.

By-the-way, there is no mal-ware for the Mac either but I still keep the ipfw firewall turned on.
 
roninsmurf said:
thanks for the tip on
clamxav
seems real slow, though -- and maybe a bit buggy. anyone have problems with it?
Click to expand...
I just scanned my Home Folder

40 quarantined items

A lot of them are Cache stuff, some zipped things, BlackBox.class (what ever that is)

They are all small files couple are 4kb and the others around 24 to 32kb in size.

Permision repair didn't bring up any of this so I'm guessing these quarantined files must be removed for some reason, for what reason? who knows?

As for speed or being buggy, haven't had any issues yet
 
you dont need a virus protect its a mac not windows.
virus = stone
windows = windows
apple = apple
stone + apple = nothing
stone + window = window breaks
 
I have heard some daft anaolgies in my time but that one tops the cake.

Stone+apple= damaged apple if you follow the throwing theme.

Macs are currently safe from viruses and spyware ( the reason I do all my online transactions on my mac and not my pc), but I still think better safe than sorry. I use Virex 7.7 which I have found reliable and effective.

It is as much about being resposible and not helping to distribute virii not just protecting your own system.

A point worth noting on the security side, OSX is the only system I have found where the root account password can be changed without being logged in as root.
 
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