The Landscape Is Changing: Mac Desktop Security

Few Americans think Macs are vulnerable to viruses.
According to Statmos, any computer is vulnerable to
malware.The high level of cluelessness about security
makes Mac users of all stripes far more vulnerable to
infection or phishing attacks than PC users who have
learned caution by experience, according to Stamos.

That doesn’t mean Macs are safe, only that Mac users have
a “go ahead, run this unsigned binary, who needs anti-
virus” attitude about potential threats, Stamos told an
audience at this year’s Black Hat security conference in
Las Vegas.

Adobe: Hacker Sights next target?

Threats to Windows machines are actually going down, at
least proportionately, as Microsoft’s security improves
and the popularity of Adobe products draws more malware
writers to focus on it rather than Windows, McAfee’s
report showed.

The issue is not that Adobe code is insecure, just that
it is growing in popularity more quickly than the stable
user base of Windows, the report said. Since January,
malware threats collected by McAfee that were aimed at
Adobe products have increased from a little over 4,000
per month to just over 14,000 in June — growth of 330
percent in six months.

Mac OS X — Keep It Out of Your Enterprise

The increase in threats to Mac OS X machines is as
dramatic as the effect is on Mac users, the report found.
“There are more Mac users than ever before as well as
steady business adoption,” the McAfee report found. “This
puts the Apple platforms squarely in the crosshairs of
malware authors. It will be interesting to see if this
type of malware makes its way to the iPhone and iPad as
well. It is probably a case of ‘when’ rather than ‘if.’”

So far, most of the threats have been socially engineered
approaches such as MacDefender — a fake antivirus
program that preyed on the budding awareness among Mac OS
X users that their platform may be vulnerable.
MacDefender showed up in April and May; by May 31 Apple
had shipped a patch that plugged the vulnerability it
exploited and cleared it from infected machines.

It is not known how many Macs were infected.
As a networked enterprise platform, however, Stamos says
Macs are not safe.

Apple’s new server operating system — OS X Lion — is so
inherently insecure that Stamos recommends keeping it off
the network altogether and using Macs only as standalone
machines connected to IP or Windows networks, not those
designed for Macs.