Virus Econ
There’s a virus attacking Macs. You might say to yourself “What? But I thought Macs don’t get virii?” Well, that’s been true in the past, but there are a few reasons for that, and while some environment variables are affecting the safety of OS X, it’s still kind of mystifying. The question I’m asking myself is “why now?”
See, while the Windows platform is an open hole fairly vulnerable to attacks from cybercrooks, it’s not this fact alone that makes it a virus magnet. It’s the system which most users have, so it wouldn’t make sense for virus writers to target the other guys. Virus writers get off on the publicity, the mountains of people that get shut down, etc. It’s like Ann Coulter - all about the reaction rather than the content. So while one could focus their attention on building a virus for Macs, they simply won’t get a reaction that compensates for the effort that went into creating the virus.
Until now, that is. But what makes this the golden moment? Viruses spread through networks, and while buddylists and email address books are good enough for that kind of thing, networks are the treasure troves. This means business/organizations. And most of those computers run Windows.
There are analysts that say that OS X is based on Unix and is stable enough to prevent a good number of attacks. This may be true, but there are smart coders out there. If every coder in the world wanted to attack OS X, nothing could stop them. Still, it’s not going to be a free for all. It’s still more profitable, in the sense that Windows is vulnerable and many networks run on Windows, to write virii for the MS system.
If you ask me, Mac users will be reasonably safe. The usual rules apply. Don’t download random files from porn sites, don’t open email attachments from people you don’t know, etc. Until large networks start using OS X, we’re not going to get flooded with Trojans.
But I’ve been wrong before.