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Actual Viruses / Spyware / Malware for OS X???

superleccy

superleccy

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Oct 31, 2004
997
187
That there big London
Hi there

I wonder, has anyone on these boards ever encountered, personally, a real Virus on their Mac? Or a real bit of Spyware, or basically any actual Malware?

I have searched these forums and have found various explanations of why OSX is immune or nearly immune to such nasties. Some of these explanations are based on technical arguments, some are based on faith. I have also found a few threads go something like "I heard of a friend..." or "I read somewhere..." or "According to Symantec...". This isn't what my question is about.

So has anyone ever experienced, first hand, real spyware / malware / spyware on their Mac?

Regards
Superleccy
 
joecool85

joecool85

macrumors 65816
Mar 9, 2005
1,355
4
Maine
Nope. In fact, when I switched 2.5 years back I actually paid for Norton's on my PB. Bad idea, what a waste of money.
 
P

portent

macrumors 6502a
Feb 17, 2004
623
2
No, never.

But I have personally seen Hong Kong/AutoStart worm-infected Macs running System 7, many years ago. A very different situation, on a very different OS.
 
superleccy

superleccy

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Oct 31, 2004
997
187
That there big London
mad jew said:
Closest I got slowed my Mac down and gave me random alerts and dialogue boxes every now and then. It was actually the predecessor to this version, but you get the idea...
Click to expand...

lol! Funny, I had this very same "virus" back in my dark & distant Windoze days too!

BTW, I should also mention that in the 1 year I have owned a Mac, I have not had any viruses, spyware or malware either. (Unless you count MS Office).

Regards
Superleccy
 
M

Melkor

macrumors 6502
Oct 12, 2005
354
0
Ah this is just the reason I'm switching to mac. I can't tell you the grief Norton is causing me. I will be rid of it soon...
 
~Shard~

~Shard~

macrumors P6
Jun 4, 2003
18,377
48
1123.6536.5321
I can honestly say I never have. And I do not run any type of virus protection, spyware tool, etc. on my Mac - the only protection I really have is my router which acts as a hardware firewall. Even without that though, I doubt I would run into any troubles. :cool:
 
A

andcraig

macrumors regular
May 28, 2005
107
0
Yes. I have.
Ha!
i win.

but yeah. MS Office is stil susceptible to macro viruses and such, but really easy to fix you just trash the preferences and the infected word docs.
And it was my own fault. But yeah OSX doesn't get viruses but some of the apps can.
 
grapes911

grapes911

Moderator emeritus
Jul 28, 2003
6,995
10
Citizens Bank Park
No viruses (because there are none), but I've had two different servers hacked on two separate occasions. Both ran 10.3. One was a file server and someone managed to remotely get into the admin account and delete some files. The password was very secure, so I don't know how they got in. The other was a webserver. Someone managed to hack the admin account (again, it was a pretty damn good password) and set up bittorrent.
 
~Shard~

~Shard~

macrumors P6
Jun 4, 2003
18,377
48
1123.6536.5321
andcraig said:
Yes. I have.
Ha!
i win.

but yeah. MS Office is stil susceptible to macro viruses and such, but really easy to fix you just trash the preferences and the infected word docs.
And it was my own fault. But yeah OSX doesn't get viruses but some of the apps can.
Click to expand...


Office is a MS product - what do expect from a company with the same initials as a disease itself? ;) :D
 
cantthinkofone

cantthinkofone

macrumors 65816
Jul 25, 2004
1,285
0
Missouri, USA
ive been using macs since the APPLE II running OS what ever, 7 8 9? i dont remember. Then we got a windows computer after the mac's keyboard went out on us, couldnt turn the computer on with out it :(. Then we finally got a PM G5 a few months after they came out, and haven't had a virus yet. We did have it crash on us with 10.3.7 i think it was, worst up date ever. Had to re-install Panther.

I have been told by a windows guy that itunes has spyware in it's programming. I forgot what exactly he said it spied on, but he went on and on about how a mac had spyware on it. He is a really smart guy, but a a$$ hole. He uses a old PM G4 for video editing, but never admits it to any one but me. So my answer would be no, macs dont have spyware. Although i still wonder about itunes some times, just seems to good to be true that there isn't viruses and spyware.
 
superleccy

superleccy

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Oct 31, 2004
997
187
That there big London
andcraig said:
Yes. I have.
Ha!
i win.

but yeah. MS Office is stil susceptible to macro viruses and such, but really easy to fix you just trash the preferences and the infected word docs.
And it was my own fault. But yeah OSX doesn't get viruses but some of the apps can.
Click to expand...

What was your virus, andcraig? I guess from your post that it was MS Office related. What did it do? How did you get it? How did you get rid of it?

Just interested.

Regards
Superleccy
 
mduser63

mduser63

macrumors 68040
Nov 9, 2004
3,042
31
Salt Lake City, UT
Our Mac II (system 6.0.8) got a virus a long long time ago. I was pretty young, but I vaguely remember my dad dealing with it. As for an OS X virus/malware, I've never experienced such a thing first hand. Based on everything I've read, no true viruses exist for OS X. Never heard of any spyware either, but there have been a couple rootkits and some malicious Word macros.
 
mcadam

mcadam

macrumors 6502a
Apr 3, 2004
593
0
københavn
I read this article the other day. I believe it gives you a pretty unbiased picture of OS X's security situation.

Furthermore, current figures indicate there is little to no risk to the Mac from spyware and malware. Less than 100 viruses are known to exist for the Mac - many of which date back to System 7 and 8. In addition, no true virus exists for Mac OS X - putting aside the highly contentious 'Opener' program. This compares to around 100,000 viruses for the Windows operating system, of which around 470 are currently in the wild.
Click to expand...

A
 
X

xmiinc

macrumors newbie
Nov 7, 2005
8
0
NYC
Longtime Macuser here...No virii ever encountered on a Mac. Can't say as much for the Winblows laptop I own, but now everythings behind a hardware firewall. In fact, just this morning I finally removed Norton Autoprotect on OSX and Norton Personal Firewall. I got tired of the misc. update alerts and incessant reminders of what couldn't be loaded because I'd shut them off!! Finally, I've got Desktop/startup silence...and it is golden.
 
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