antivirus Best Mac Anti-Virus Thread

[.Neo]

I love this software! :p

They just released Common Sense Security 2013! :woot:

[PsyOpWarlord]

Running ESET Cyber Security here. Running the newer beta they have here and it seems to be working pretty good. Not that I need it as much for the Mac side, but I share files with my windows machine at work and its a requirement to have an active antivirus when working form home.

http://www.eset.com/...cyber-security/

[cooky560 Veteran]

They just released Common Sense Security 2013! :woot:

:woot: I'm guessing it's amazingly similar to 2012

[king_of_hearts]

I recently installed Avast for Mac.

Much better than its windows counterpart.

Good interface, low resource usage, and doesn't bug me to death.

[Mens Nemorosus]

I installed Avast, the free edition (don't know if there's a payware edition for Mac). It just consumes my menubar space, lol, and i can ever turn it off from there. It's okay. If i see it slowing down my laptop i'll remove it eventually.

[Sonne]

None

I installed a scanner a year or two ago, it found nothing and I promptly removed it

[neuroticdave]

AntiVirus? On a Mac? Serious? I spend some time in the back alley of the web myself, but I have never had any issues. Or have I...

[goretsky Supervisor]

Hello,

 

The likelihood of getting hit by something OS X-specific is orders of magnitudes lower than for Windows-based computers, but there's still some OS X malware out there, as well as threats which are platform-independent (Adobe Flash, PDF, HTML, Java, JavaScript based, etc.).  It has been my experience, though, that some Mac users run anti-malware software if they exchange files with colleagues who use Windows.

 

Regards,

 

Aryeh Goretsky

 

AntiVirus? On a Mac? Serious? I spend some time in the back alley of the web myself, but I have never had any issues. Or have I...

[TyRidian]

I use avast! Free Antivirus & Blue Coat K9 Web Protection to go along with it.

[einsteinbqat]

The thing with Avast is that it doesn't look for Windows viruses unlike Avira, Sophos, etc. Avast only look for virus targeting Mac.

[alexisgoody]

Sophos is highly recommended!

[SuperKid]

Do you even need an antivirus on a mac scanning every file you download etc.. or do you just need one to do the occasional scan ever so often?

[Nick H. Supervisor]

Do you even need an antivirus on a mac scanning every file you download etc.. or do you just need one to do the occasional scan ever so often?

I run Sophos, and it scans files in realtime I think. It's been very rare that it's found anything, though. I think I've had 2 warnings in the several years I've been using it.

[goretsky Supervisor]

Hello,

 

Malware specifically written for Mac OS X occurs orders of magnitude far less frequently than its Windows-based brethren, but it is still not zero and Macs can still be subject to cross-platfom threats from Flash, HTML, Java, JavaScript, PDF and other frameworks, as well as things like scams, spam, phishing, etc., that can be blocked by anti-malware software.  It's probably a good to run anti-malware software in real-time to catch those kinds of intrusions, even if the actual OS X-specific threats still represent only a minority of threats out there.

 

Regards,

 

Aryeh Goretsky

 

 

Do you even need an antivirus on a mac scanning every file you download etc.. or do you just need one to do the occasional scan ever so often?

[Sonne]

Do you even need an antivirus on a mac scanning every file you download etc.. or do you just need one to do the occasional scan ever so often?

 

No, there are not now, nor have there ever been, any viruses in the wild that effect OS X (12+ years). 

 

If you really want to, you can get ClamX, which will scan for nasties and quarantine them. It can clean out a bunch of harmless (for Windows) junk which has no impact anyway. The nice thing about ClamX is it doesn't run in the background, and so it doesn't use any resources until you open it for a scan.

 

Mac Virus/Malware FAQ;

http://guides.macrumors.com/Mac_Virus/Malware_FAQ

[Max Norris]

No, there are not now, nor have there ever been, any viruses in the wild that effect OS X (12+ years).

I really wish people would stop saying something along these lines as a justification to be lax with safe computing habits and security.  There's other types of malware out there (even for OSX and Linux), real self-replicating viruses are actually a fairly small percentage of that. Most of it is money driven (feed you ads, steal information like banking or passwords, "ransomware", etc) so the Windows users get the bulk of it due to sheer numbers. 

[Xerxes]

EDIT: Nevermind, best keep that to myself.

[snaphat (Myles Landwehr) Member]

 

No, there are not now, nor have there ever been, any viruses in the wild that effect OS X (12+ years). 

 

If you really want to, you can get ClamX, which will scan for nasties and quarantine them. It can clean out a bunch of harmless (for Windows) junk which has no impact anyway. The nice thing about ClamX is it doesn't run in the background, and so it doesn't use any resources until you open it for a scan.

 

Mac Virus/Malware FAQ;

http://guides.macrumors.com/Mac_Virus/Malware_FAQ

 

 

That's just a pedantic definition that while being strictly correct misses the bigger picture (it's basically a strawman argument). End users don't care if what you are talking about is strictly a virus or more generally what is categorized as malware, cross platform attack, or a phishing scam. Malware does exist for Mac: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macintosh#Software. Even that FAQ you linked has removal instructions for malware. There's not much of it though so you are generally much safer in OS X than you'd be in Windows*.

 

*Note: If you don't know better though you'll be just as susceptible to a fishing scam as someone running Windows. So that link is basically doing a disservice to readers who may not know better and now are reinforced of a belief that they can just do nothing and be perfectly safe.

[goretsky Supervisor]

Hello,

 

On the Windows side, 10% or less of the malware seen on a daily basis is computer viruses.  The rest is stuff like OSX/Lamadai remote access trojan or OSX/Flashback botnet, except on Windows instead of OS X like those two examples of Mac-specific malware.

Regards,

Aryeh Goretsky

[Sonne]

Hello,

 

On the Windows side, 10% or less of the malware seen on a daily basis is computer viruses.  The rest is stuff like OSX/Lamadai remote access trojan or OSX/Flashback botnet, except on Windows instead of OS X like those two examples of Mac-specific malware.

Regards,

Aryeh Goretsky

 

The first link is to not only an article that you wrote but also one that is hosted on an ESET blog (ESET is an A/V company that sells A/V software for Mac OS). The second link goes directly to ESET's site...That would be like me posting a review of my own game here and then linking to my site that sells it...Basically spam/advertising or at the very least quite biased

[snaphat (Myles Landwehr) Member]

The first link is to not only an article that you wrote but also one that is hosted on an ESET blog (ESET is an A/V company that sells A/V software for Mac OS). The second link goes directly to ESET's site...That would be like me posting a review of my own game here and then linking to my site that sells it...Basically spam/advertising or at the very least quite biased

 

Based off of your logic, if I had linked the articles then they would have been perfectly valid since I'm not associated with ESET and don't use ESET software. I'll independently vouch for the articles in that case. You were just using his connection to ESET to distract from the point --> that malware for Mac exists and that even in Windows only a small portion seen in actual infections can be considered viruses. In any case, here's a wiki link with 14 secondary sources: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trojan_BackDoor.Flashback

 

It is worth noting that in general, linking to information about one's own research or one's companies research doesn't make the contained information irrelevant or biased regardless of whether it has a side effect of promoting the person or company. I'm not sure how you think research works, but it doesn't generally include making up results (in this case Inventing the OS X Flashback Trojan or details about it). It shouldn't make any difference whether goretsky provides primary sources of information about it or someone else provides the same sources as second hand sources because you should be judging the information on its merit and not on who tips you off to the information.

[goretsky Supervisor]

Hello,

Actually I didn't write the first article, but a colleague of mine did. I posted the links because I was aware of them and had them handy. Here are some non-ESET links that you might enjoy:

Intego

• INTEGO SECURITY MEMO: Mac Flashback Trojan Horse Masquerades as Flash Player Installer Package
• New OS X Malware: Another Tibet Variant Found

McAfee

• Variant of Mac Flashback Malware Making the Rounds

Symantec

• Crisis for Mac
• Free Online Movie Blogs Serving up Trojan for Windows and Mac

As you can see from these and other articles and telemetry reported from the above companies, OS X-specific malware appears to be on the rise, although it is still far less frequently detected than the Windows kind. 

 

Regards,

 

Aryeh Goretsky

 

The first link is to not only an article that you wrote but also one that is hosted on an ESET blog (ESET is an A/V company that sells A/V software for Mac OS). The second link goes directly to ESET's site...That would be like me posting a review of my own game here and then linking to my site that sells it...Basically spam/advertising or at the very least quite biased

[Sonne]

Hello....

 

 

Aryeh Goretsky

 I appreciate your persistence (being that antivirus software is your business) that there have been reports *by antivirus software companies* that Mac users should be at least a little persistent when it comes to security however that flies in the face of the real truth of things. That running real time protection on your Mac is more harm than good. As a user of OS X since its inception I have never had a virus, trojan or anything of a threat on any of my Mac's. 

 

If this were a poll on any Mac centric forum you would find that the savviest of OS X users will agree that a real time A/V running on a Mac is as useful as running a real time CPU resource manager or disk defragmenter or  cache clean up app...The pro's of such by far are outweighed by the cons and in all cases are a waste of time and resources. 

 

I stand by that it is more of a hindrance to run real time antivirus software on a Mac than vice versa... Link me to a scanner and I will install it and report back the findings, if there is anything on my main system that is at all threatening to my OS X environment I will bow down and agree...Years of OS X usage tells me though that the only thing that may come up will be some malware for Windows on my Mac if anything... I think first one has to understand the nature of OS X and its modularity, without a registry. 

[Sonne]

Immediately after my last post I downloaded and ran ClamAV and as I thought there was nothing malicious on my Mac, mind you this machine runs 24/7...The only thing found was a possible Windows XP crack in my mail.... The Mac tested is running Mavericks, fully updated, and has been since early developer preview, like I mentioned 24/7...and what was found? Nothing malicious to OS X. The 2 instances of a possible malicious Windows XP crack found in my mail are just that, possible XP threats. 

 

So I should shut down everything and start a real time scanning A/V app on this system? Yeah, not likely :)

 

Not for nothing I urge every Mac user here to do the same, run a scan and see what the results are and then ask yourself if a realtime A/V is worth it or not.

 

 

[Max Norris]

As a user of OS X since its inception I have never had a virus, trojan or anything of a threat on any of my Mac's.

This is the very definition of anecdotal evidence.  I haven't had malware on my Windows machine in over 10 years, therefore it doesn't exist.  I don't know anyone who owns an iPhone, therefore they don't exist.  I don't know anyone who owns a PS4 either, so obviously nobody has one.  See how this works? 

 

I'm not saying that it means you need full time running protection.  I don't use a resident AV suite on my Windows machines either, I use other means to keep my systems secure.   (I agree with wasted resources.. if you're relying on an AV suite to tell you that you got malware, you probably already messed up.)  But it doesn't mean you're immune to malware and you can just do whatever you please with anything you do or download either.  Malware does exist for other operating systems.  OSX has had it's attacks, even Linux has had some.  (Kernel.org and a few other high profile sites being taking down due to a rootkit anyone?)   There is no such thing as an operating system that's immune to malware or exploitation.  User error, gullibility, vulnerabilities in software, or just plain carelessness, all sorts of ways to do damage to somebody's system.  The only reason Windows machines get targeted the most is due to the sheer number of users, most current malware is money or data theft oriented, they tend to go where the most people are.

 

I think first one has to understand the nature of OS X and its modularity, without a registry.

What does the registry have to do with anything It's just a database of settings with an easy to use API and security model versus configuration files scattered throughout the file system. That's it. (Hint, it's not unique to Windows either.)