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Uncategorized Monday, June 25th 2012 at 1:50 pm

Apple No Longer Claims It’s Immune to Viruses

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Apple, widely known for being essentially immune to viruses has now changed the wording on its website to clarify that Mac computers aren’t in fact immune to malware. Until recently, Apple’s “Why Buy Mac” page, which touts the benefits of OS X, displayed an icon that claimed a Mac “doesn’t get PC viruses.” Now, instead, it reads that a Mac is “built to be safe.” It’s an amusing little change, and one that’s quite noteworthy coming from Apple.

Now that Apple products are far more ubiquitous and, as a result, hackers are starting to pay more attention to abusing Apple’s operating systems, the company is slowly having to abandon previous claims of virus immunity. After the Flashback botnet infected over half a million Macs, it started becoming a little clearer that Mac’s relative freedom from infection was due to a historic lack of viruses directed toward the machines at least as much as any sort of inherent security. Of course, OS X doesn’t get PC viruses; it gets OS X viruses. Now Apple is going to have to walk themselves back from the old invincibility stance if they want to start urging users to make sure they have the kind of virus protection they need.

Apple has been taking steps to increase security, like releasing a security guide for iOS and including a feature called Gatekeeper in the upcoming OS X 10.8, but those lagging behind with older operating systems may still be at risk. Just this May, Apple ended support for Leopard (OS X 10.5) and the millions of users who are still on these systems — and who are probably not intimately acquainted with the constant watch-your-back-24-7 virus paranoia of lifetime Windows users — are slowly transitioning into vulnerability.

The majority of malware might still be floating around in the Windows world, but it’s still important to remember that no OS is bulletproof once people start shooting at it. You can never be too careful.

(via PC World)

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  • Carlos Machina

    I’ve been using Mac since the 512, and Apple has never claimed that it’s immune to viruses.  I had the init virus once on my Mac Plus, and the hypercard virus after that.  The Macs I use at school have virus filters installed.

    Macs have been and are less likely to get viruses.  That’s still a fact.

  • Jack Bond

    Apple doesn’t -do- much of anything to avoid viruses. They just aren’t mainstream enough to be the focus of virus developers.

  • Jewey

    nobody creates viruses for a useless os like osx, it has no market share.

  • Ambjorn

     Thats only because not enough people use Macs, so people who write viruses havnt got enough people to annoy, if Macs become really popular then so will viruses.

  • Dan221122

    yea but in this day and age apples finding its way into everyone’s home so it will just be a matter of time until they become infected

  • whshishh

    Hmmmm….so Apple fanboys are noted for their willingness to pay more for what is readily available for less….so the hackers that write malware for the purposes of obtaining data for financial exploitation are probably just waiting for critical mass to strike a target rich (literally!) ecosystem that has been lulled by a false sense of security.  

  • Johhny

    Apple has been lying to its users for years.  Smart people avoid Apple products.  The rest don’t know any better.

  • Jervinator

    What Apple fanbois refuse to admit is that the strengths of OS X are shared by “that Bohemian OS that is used by uber-nerd losers”, a.k.a. Linux. Maybe that is because OS X is most the same under the hood and it’s only real defining feature is the UI… which is available as Mac4Lin.

  • Jace

    No. This is a common misconception, and is only one, smaller reason why viruses aren’t common on Apple OS. The main reason is that the OS itself is much more secure and robust than Windows, and always has been.

  • Fran

    Another idiot.

  • Jenev

    Spoken like the true insecure PC user. Poor baby. Wait around another few years – Microsoft may steal another idea from Apple soon, and your OS will be just as good.