Oh good grief. They don't get infected because, at core, OS X Macs are industrial strength UNIX™, not pasted on security. There are no true computer viruses or worms for OS X although the malware writers have been trying for 12 years. There are seven known computer virus or worm candidates (self-duplicating, self-transmitting, self-installing, self-initianting/running programs) that have been put forward during that time and all failed for the same reason; they all failed for lack of a viable vector. The one that was considered the most possible to succeed took two computer engineers, two Mac OS X specialists and two Magazine pundits SIX HOURS merely to get it to copy itself over its chosen Bluetooth vector from one Mac to another. . . and then it refused to work.
Sorry folks but there are plenty of Mac viruses out there and Macs get hacked all the time. The days of Macs flying under the radar are long gone.
@ QuisCustodiet1776, You really don't know what you are talking about. There are NOT "plenty of Mac viruses out there." and Macs are not getting "hacked all the time." Yes, the Mac has been hacked, but it usually takes a vulnerability that took months to find and an exploit that took months to prepare, but only seconds to execute at one of the White Hat contests. The hackers at those contests go AFTER the Macs because it is the challenge.
You said to "Google Mac Virus 2014." I have done it quite regularly, because I keep on top of it. Frankly, there is noting there. The only thing you'll find are Trojans. The funniest one is the latest HOAX from Dr. Web out of Russia in which they claim 17,000 Macs infected with the backdoor "worm." But what they are trying to sell their anti-virus offering for personal Mac users. Two years ago they were the ones who came up with the amazing disappearing 680,000 Java based Mac botnet that kept shrinking. . . that they claimed to have found by setting up a "honey-pot" server to intercept the Macs calling home to the bonnet's control server. However, like this 17,000 member botnet, NO ONE HAS EVER FOUND AN INFECTED MAC IN THE WILD! Not one! NONE! In fact, users could check their Mac's UUIDs on Dr. Web's "honey-pot" to see if they were infected. . . I found two of my Macs listed as infected. But that was impossible, because they had NEVER had Java installed on them! One of them was a dedicated machine that had never been connected to the internet!
In fact, Dr. Web had Macs listed as infected that had UUID's for Macs that had yet to be manufactured!
To even get infected a user had to have downloaded an obscure Russian language game, then gone to an even more obscure Russian language character generator site for the game and installed characters for the game. . . yet the game itself had only been downloaded fewer than 20,000 times. Yet supposedly 680,000 Macs were infected, 95% in English speaking US, Canada, and the UK? It was a cross platform JAVA vulnerability, yet only 2% of the infections affected non-Macs? Give us a break, not possible. Add all that up, and nothing fit. No one was reporting any infections. They were reporting their UUIDs on the list, but not infected!
What Dr. Web had was a list of UUIDs known in the range that would be for Macs. . . and were trying to sell their Dr. Web anti-Virus for business. It was a Hoax. Within a week, the 680K infected had dropped to 270K then a few days later to 130K then under 80K, as more and more people reported no infections found, then it dropped off the media radar. . . never to be heard of again. They are doing a rinse and repeat of their hoax on a smaller scale this year. Essentially the Mac community is laughing at them.
from Proxy_User:Yes, but if a virus wants to install itself on a Mac, it has to ask the user to type in the administrative password. Many of them do, since they’re not skilled Unix system administrators.
That, by definition, is not a computer virus, proxy_user. What you are describing is a Trojan Horse program. A Trojan is a program that does something other than described, usually malicious. No computer that can load an application can be immune from a Trojan. Trojans use what is termed social engineering, manipulation of the user, trickery, to get installed on the computer.
There are 57 known Trojan Horse programs in 8 known families for the Mac. Each and every one of them will be recognized by Mac OS X which will warn the user before completing a download, installation, or allowing it to run for the first time. A user must be a complete moron to ignore all those warnings, plus be privy to the Administrator's Name and Password to do any of those things to infect the Mac, not just click an "OK" check box. Apple pushes out updates to their file definitions of the Trojans whenever there is a change or an addition required, usually within 24 hours.
By the way, the Java Trojan that Dr. Web claimed created that botnet? It was a trojan that had been identified by Apple and was included in the definitions almost a year before Dr. Web claimed to have discovered their infections.
If you check with the threat reports, you will find even the worst case Trojans for Macs list the number of infections reports as fewer than 50 machines affected.
That is why OS X Macs don't get infected, PhillyRed.
As to your totally ignorant claim that no one uses Mac "seriously beyond creatives and school kids," I suppose that's who is pictured in the photograph below at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory Design and Landing Team using their own personal laptop computers?
NASA's Jet Propulsion Labs Mars Curiosity Rover Design and Landing Team
Gosh, PhillyRed, I see only two Windows PC computers in the entire room.
Just so you don't think these Macs are running Linux or Windows,
Yup! You can see they are running Apple OS X.
Well, I don't think these school children and creatives . . . oops, ROCKET SCIENTISTS, would quite agree with you, PhillyRed.
As for your really trite "security-by-obscurity" canard, that has been shot down so many times I will just point out that 99% of Macs are sitting out there completely naked, with no 3rd party commercial anti-virus running at all. . . and many of them with no software firewalls. It is also well known that Mac users tend to spend money far more than PC users and actual studies have shown that Mac users have MORE disposable income. Don't you think that 100,000,000 fairly wealthy SITTING DUCKS would be really JUICY targets for all those crooks out there?
If they were so easily "plucked," WHY HAVEN'T THEY BEEN STRIPPED OF ALL THEIR FEATHERS????