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To: MrShoop
The difference in the stories is that most recent is actually reporting on something real, where the others are just FUD. As you allude to in your title, it really is like the boy who cried wolf. This is now something to take seriously, but will people after all the false alarms?

Nope, this news is no different than the "real" stories that were reported in 2010, 09, 08, 07, 06, 05 ... 0X ad nauseum... Until the crackers find a viable VECTOR to spread their viruses and worms that does NOT involve the willing and active participation of the USER with an administrator's name and password, there's not much to worry about. OSX identifies and warns users if and when you are attempting to download, install, or run a Trojan. There are, at last count only 18 known trojans in five distinct and easily identifiable families of Trojans... and each of the are easy to avoid.

The "security by obscurity" canard has been shot down so many times and proven wrong it is ludicrous. There are better than 55 MILLION OSX Macs in the wild and the number of OSX viruses, worms, and involuntary spam bots is still ZERO. . . after TEN YEARS OF TRYING. That is NOT because it is obscure, MrShoop. Crackers have written viruses and worms that have infected installed bases of fewer than 12 THOUSAND vulnerable machines because it was economically worth doing. You cannot say that a target of 55 MILLION sitting ducks with no anti-virus protection is not an economically desirable target with that kind of evidence slapping you in the face. The simple fact is, contrary to all the screaming the Windows' fanatics do, that it is REALISTICALLY that much harder to do. If it were not, it would have been done and there would be thousands of Mac Spam bots out there. There are not. Prima Facie evidence that it has not happened.

7 posted on 05/05/2011 4:24:18 PM PDT by Swordmaker (This tag line is a Microsoft product "insult" free zone.)
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To: Swordmaker
OSX is harder to attack (i have an iMac, BTW), but not impossible. You are wrong that there are zero instances of worms/malware/spambots. In fact there were recently numbers released that macs made up 16% of the infected computers in the Jnanabot network. Apple has been recommending anti-virus software for 3 years now. Your attitude is going to make it worse for mac owners because you are discouraging caution which is clearly warranted.

http://www.symantec.com/connect/blogs/exploiting-jnanabot-fun-and-profit

8 posted on 05/05/2011 5:03:28 PM PDT by Wayne07
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To: Swordmaker
Some infection numbers from Sophos from people who run their software. http://nakedsecurity.sophos.com/2010/11/18/free-anti-virus-for-mac-150000-active-users-and-plenty-of-malware-found/


9 posted on 05/05/2011 5:14:17 PM PDT by Wayne07
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