Mac users should stay virus vigilant

Of all the attributes of the Macintosh platform that rub salt into the often-sensitive hides of rival platforms, it is the Mac's resistance to viruses, worms, trojans and all the other horned evil beasties roaming the internet that stings the most.

Even executives of the companies making their money from beating off malicious software, called malware, concede the point. "The threats just aren't there on the Mac," says Rowan Trollope, the senior vice-president of Symantec, a maker of anti-malware products.

But that does not mean Macintosh users should not be vigilant and take precautions.

Macs may not be affected by viruses but they can pass them on. It's a bit like swine flu: the virus originated in pigs but humans were infected, sometimes without their knowledge. They then could, unwittingly, pass the virus on.

A computer virus embedded in an email sent to a Mac from an infected Windows machine will not affect the Mac but if the virus is not detected and the document is sent to a Windows user, it will affect that PC.

Mac OS X viruses exist but, so far, none seems to have done any actual damage. Those that do exist were often written to win hacker competitions and have not been released into what they call "the wild".

We tend to call any malware a "virus" but to be a virus, the malicious computer code must be able to copy itself and sneak into a computer without the owner's knowledge.

Malware today is more than that. It is big business, run by organised crime groups using methods such as "social engineering" to steal identities - bank account details and credit card PINs - and defrauding people by hoodwinking them with phoney ads and offers too good to be true.

While the spread of always-on broadband has improved internet use vastly, it has also increased the risk of infection and made it easier for criminals to, for instance, infect a PC (but not a Mac) and use it without the owner's knowledge to distribute spam and malware.

Most of us have seen emails purporting to come from banks, asking you to confirm your credit card or bank account numbers and PINs by sending them to the bank.

The email might look genuine but anyone responding to it could have their bank account suddenly emptied. Real banks don't send emails like that.

Banks decline to say how much the criminals are reaping, but the average of several analysts' estimates suggests last year in the US alone the criminals got about $4.5 billion. Estimates for Australia are about A$100 million annually, but the real take could be higher.

So should a Mac owner install anti-virus software? Yes, they should, if only to do their bit to combat the criminals.

Yes, some anti-virus software can use up processing power and cause a few problems, but the latest products, such as Symantec's Norton Anti-Virus for Macs, PC Tools' iAntivirus for Mac, McAfee's VirusScan for Mac and Sophos, which aims more at commercial Mac installations, are very efficient.

A recent discussion on the iMug (Melbourne Macintosh User Group) online forum supported the importance of anti-virus protection.

"In my opinion, running any internet-connected computer or system used to share files with other parties ought to run (protective) software," said a former president of iMug, Anthony Caruana.

- © Fairfax NZ News