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McAfee Feigns Fear at Mac Security
Posted by
Zonk
on Fri May 05, 2006 09:36 AM
from the raising-the-terror-level dept.
from the raising-the-terror-level dept.
conq writes "BusinessWeek reports that McAfee has just come out with a report which asks the question 'Is Mac OS X the Next Windows?'." They appear to be attempting to scare consumers into buying anti-virus software for OSX. Blogger Arik Hesseldahl breaks down their claims: "First off, Mac users on average pay more for their computers, are self-selected because they tend to know more about technology than your average PC buyer, and by and large are a bit more affluent than those who buy cheapo commodity Windows PCs ... When you take into account the ongoing growth in general PC ownership, even if Apple pushes its annual unit sales to 12 million or more by 2010, its share of the overall market will still account for about 4%, leaving Windows the far more tasty target."
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IT: Security Vendor McAfee to Pay $50 Million Fine 229 comments
goombah99 writes "RedHerring.com reports that Security Vendor McAfee has agreed to pay a fine of fifty million dollars stemming from false SEC filing. McAfee cooked its books, overstating its revenues one year by 131%, or half a billion dollars. The method employed was 'channel stuffing' in which compliant re-sellers are effectively paid to buy and hold inventory they may never sell. The shipped goods are booked as revenue and the payments disguised in the books. When it caught up with them, McAfee's stock price crashed, wiping out a billion dollars of shareholder capitalization. The story quotes an analyst saying this maybe the swan song for the once dominant vendor."
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IT: McAfee Anti-Virus Causes Widespread File Damage 353 comments
AJ Mexico writes, "[Friday] McAfee released an anti-virus update that contained an anomaly in the DAT file that caused many important files to be deleted from affected systems.
At my company, tens of thousands of files were deleted from dozens of servers and around 2000 user machines. Affected applications included MS Office, and products from IBM (Rational), GreenHills, MS Office, Ansys, Adobe, Autocad, Hyperion, Win MPM, MS Shared, MapInfo, Macromedia, MySQL, CA, Cold Fusion, ATI, FTP Voyager, Visual Studio, PTC, ADS, FEMAP, STAT, Rational.Apparently the DAT file targeted mostly, if not exclusively, DLLs and EXE files." An anonymous reader added, "Already, the SANS Internet Storm Center received a number of notes from distressed sysadmins reporting thousands of deleted or quarantined files. McAfee in response released advice to restore the files. Users who configured McAfee to delete files are left with using backups (we all got good backups... or?) or System restore."
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FUD or Valid Argument? (Score:4, Informative)
Why that wasn't included in the posted story, I'll never know. If you actually take a look at the PDF, it's got some good histograms and charts as well as a little more detail into the Leap virus.
Yes, it does follow from this that users should buy McAfee anti-virus for Macs. The simple fact of the matter is that this is a white paper that tilts in their favor. It has some valid points, though, and I don't think they need to tell people to be afraid. If Mac users start getting these viruses then they will truly need anti-virus software for their machines. They site the National Vulnerability Database and other sources in this document so it's not like they're making stuff up or are the only ones claiming there is an upcoming security risk.
I hate McAfee software. Like most anti-virus software, it uses too much memory and hogs the CPU if it's a real-time checker. I wouldn't opt for it if it was the last anti-virus company in existence. However after reading their white paper, it is convincing. I do think that if Apple doesn't take an initiative to protect their users from things like Leap then Mac users will need auxiliary anti-virus protection from a third party.
One man's FUD is another man's common sense. I don't care about the size or manufacturer of a device--if it runs programs in a turing-machine like manner, it can be infected.
Re:FUD or Valid Argument? (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re:FUD or Valid Argument? (Score:4, Insightful)
I suspect that rather than their motivation to make a profit, it is really the years of strangely incongruous (for a security company) and untrustworthy behavior like pioneering the pop-up browser advertisements and so forth that have caused you to trust not McAfee.
Parent
Re:FUD or Valid Argument? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:FUD or Valid Argument? (Score:4, Insightful)
1. McAfee isn't a person. Most people aren't profit-oriented. Yes, most people have to work, but the pursuit of profit is not the primary focus of most people. On the other hand, most corporations seek nothing *but* profits.
2. While corporations have been known to do the right or promote honest facts, from time to time, this is not one of those times. Using fear is one of the most vulgar and appalling of manipulation techniques.
Any time a corporation tries to spread fear, and that corporation just happens to sell a product that directly addresses that fear, it's wise to become weary, because it's in that corporation's best interest to overstate the fear.
McAfee is just trying to build a market (which is a completely reasonable thing for a corporation to do), but in this specific case, they are trying to build a market which does not exist, and trying to force it into existence will have a net negative impact on the rest of us, as tends to be the case with FUD.
Parent
Re:FUD or Valid Argument? (Score:3, Interesting)
But you see, there are companies that make products, even have "monopolies" in their market, yet don't spread FUD or even advertise to my knowledge.
Take Bic for example. There revenue comes from: stationery (pens, penci
Re:FUD or Valid Argument? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:FUD or Valid Argument? (Score:5, Informative)
Are you sure this is Apple's mission? Personally, I use OSX because it is based on BSD. I know many other recent Mac converts that are the same as me - in other words, it is actually people who understand technology that are moving to the Mac. I'm sure Apple loves that, and I doubt it is their mission to "dilute the technical abilities of their user base".
Parent
Virus probably less of a burden than MacAffee (Score:5, Interesting)
I think it speaks for itself that, according to that PDF, the macintoshes with 1/50th of the market share have 1/1315th of the number of identified viruses, somewhat disproportionate to their decreased market share.
Have got MacAffee antivirus installed as corporate policy on my business peesee, and it humbles what is otherwise a fairly able laptop. Perhaps Apple's move to a more powerful architecture means that they can now shoulder the MacAffee burden too?
Parent
Re:FUD or Valid Argument? (Score:5, Informative)
Parent
Re:FUD or Valid Argument? (Score:3, Insightful)
What does Windows have to do with this? Nobody questions the fact that Apple is more secure that Windows. However, being better than the worst does not automatically make you good. Cuba is freer than North Korea, but that doesn't mean I'd want to liv
Re:FUD or Valid Argument? (Score:3, Insightful)
Symantec, McAfee, and the like have been urging Mac users to buy antivirus software for years. There's always this threat that someone might write some very bad viruses soon, and those viruses never materialized. So if you bought an anti-virus 4 years ago, and paid for all the updates, you've pretty much wasted your money.
Also, I think it's worth noting that for anyone who knows what t
self-selected? (Score:5, Insightful)
While this is true in some segments of the market (*nix geeks migrating to OS X), it is by no means true of other segments. There are many designers/graphics pros who choose to use Macs. However, this in no way implies that they actually understand technology. Some do. Many don't. The choice to use Macs is typically because either they have always used Macs or that is what they were trained on.
Antivirus companies are scared... (Score:5, Insightful)
Personally, I don't trust any of the antivirus companies one inch. It's big business, and it is in their interests that there are security threats and viruses around. Talk about conflict of interest...
Macs should still protect themselves (Score:5, Interesting)
A few years ago I had a situation (in an all mac offce) where we burned a CD and sent it to a client (the client was Windows based). The client complained that some of the files were infected. As a Mac-only office, I didn't care about running virus protection, so the files went unchecked.
In my current office, a mixed enviroment, I make sure that both OS's are covered. even if the chance of the macs getting infected is next to nill, I want my PCs to be safe.
Re:Macs should still protect themselves (Score:5, Funny)
Please tell me that someone else here read "anti-vi" and thought of the text editor? And that "anti-vi" meant emacs?
Parent
Re:Macs should still protect themselves (Score:3, Interesting)
True.. but they can also be infected, especially in a corporate environment.
Entourage and Word on OSX are susceptable to macro viruses! There's a pretty bad one going around right now. Our IT dept just finished re-osing one of the editor's powerbooks because his entourage was spamming the hell out of everyone... due to a macro virus.
It's funny that it's caused by MS software, but that doesn't change the fact that Macs can and *do* get viruses tod
market niche is not safety (Score:5, Insightful)
Worms that have targeted other niche platforms including web servers and database servers of various kinds have also demonstrated that platforms with a few hundred thousand deployed systems (much smaller than the deployed base of Macintosh systems) are vulnerable to worm attacks.
Mac is an appealing target... (Score:5, Insightful)
Just my $0.02...
Re:Mac is an appealing target... (Score:4, Insightful)
Don't worry, McAfee and Norton are working on it as we speak. As soon as they can put together something more fearful than the cute little proofs of concept that have been floating around expect them to announce a full "epidemic".
It's not legal? It's not ethical? It's not honest? It doesn't matter. Their business model REQUIRES them act in this way. Though not officially, of course.
Parent
Re:Mac is an appealing target... (Score:3, Insightful)
Yes, in the same way that my desire for pizza REQUIRES that I kill you and take your pizza.
In additions to the anti-virus business, here are other professions which REQUIRE unethical and illegal behaviour:
- Medical doctors are REQUIRED to spread cancer, AIDS and hepatities.
- Firefighters are REQUIRED to be arsonists.
- Auto mechanics are REQUIRED to cause broken fuel pumps,
Re:Mac is an appealing target... (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
In London... (Score:3, Informative)
Re:In London... (Score:3, Insightful)
Tech-savvy users of any consumer OS are, always have been, and always will be the minority. Wheter Mac users are more tech-savvy than PC users is a matter of degree, not a matter of the trend being reversed.
I suspect that it is the case that Mac users are at least a little more tech-savvy, overall, than PC users, if only because Pcs are so domi
Essentially... (Score:5, Insightful)
apple is dead! long live apple! (Score:5, Interesting)
Now all i hear about is that 'any day now' All the macs on the planet are going to be suddenly and utterly destroyed by the impending virus rush.
Look, I don't encourage people to run any system without security. My macs are all behind a nice firewall. However, I think that, given the record of some clever young programmers to break industry strength security in short order, i wonder when all of these virus writers are going to come over and focus on the mac? i mean, the mac market hasn't really changed much in the last year or two. (in terms of numbers) and the hardware change doesnt seem to have made it any easier to infect the systems.
Mac users and the mac community in general have been snobbishly touting the no viruses thing for quite awhile now. There are tons of clever hackers out there who can break all sorts of security, yet all we have so far are a few lame-ass trojans that you have to type your password in to install. (which, really are not viruses so much) So apparently the big carrot of 'first mac virus that actually was a virus' is really not that big of a carrot.
While i am a software engineer on macs, my expertise does not lie in the virus-area, so i can't really say if it is really much harder to write for the mac, or if it is just unappealing in a business sense (for the virus writers).
my opinion: if i measured my income with each thousand machines i added to my botnet with a virus i wrote, then i think i would stick to the 95% of the market that is fairly homogenous in terms of security. (ie all windows) and leave the outlying OSes (mac, linux) because even if both mac and linux double or triple their respective marketshares in the next five years, windows will still be the easy choice for virus makers.
If you have time, instead of RTFA, read this (Score:5, Informative)
It is a very interesting article about the real problems of anti virus companies (yes, no mac viruses mentioned) by Mr. Kaspersky himself. It also includes the problems antiviruses have including their products.
http://www.kaspersky.com/eugenearticle [kaspersky.com]
As a guy gave up running win32 for 3 years, I still check their site/blog as well as F-Secure one.
As a side note (hopefully not needed)
KASPERSKY DOES NOT PRODUCE MAC PRODUCTS. No FUD there.
Dear McAfee, (Score:4, Insightful)
Thank you for your concern,
A very "frightened" OS X user.
Wtf? (Score:5, Funny)
"Self. Your technical savviness has not gone unnoticed. You've been selected. Congratulations."
Parent
Re:Tend to know more? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Must be different Apple users (Score:3, Insightful)
If course they say "average PC buyer". I guess if you add the sum of all PC buyer tech knowledge and make an average... But thats like saying that 90% of all Mac user who drive have a Volkswagen. It seems true (it really does) but its not.
Re:Must be different Apple users (Score:4, Insightful)
I consider myself primarily a Mac user, even though I typically use Linux, OS X, and Windows every day. I do the vast majority of my work on my Apple laptop, and it is the platform I feel most comfortable with. The interesting thing is I've only been a Mac user since the summer of 2004. At my last job we purchased a large XServe G5 cluster (256 nodes), which at the time was probably the 3rd largest Apple cluster in a university. I used a Linux workstation at this point, and I was having doubts about running OS X on a cluster. I flew out to the WWDC while the ink was still drying on the PO. I was impressed with the developers tools I saw at WWDC, and with the whole OS experience. I ordered a iMac G5 for my desk the very day they were available for sale. We had to work at porting some applications to OS X, and there were a few issues with being one of the earliest large HPC clusters (especially one that ran large MPI applications over Ethernet - lots of early Mac clusters ran embarassingly parallel stuff, or infinniband line VT). I took a new job where I spend a good chunk of time writing scietific sofware for Linux based clusters - I insisted my employeer provide me with a Mac (we have about 1,200 employees and run about 40% Mac desktops, but no one in my group had a Mac).
Parent
Re:Must be different Apple users (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Must be different Apple users (Score:4, Interesting)
Parent
Re:Must be different Apple users (Score:5, Interesting)
Why? Simple: Mac = *nix (which I love on servers) + great windows manager
That's my reason, period. For things which I don't want to fuss with (music, digital photos, updates, etc) OS X is simple and I don't have to worry about it. For things that I do want to fuss with I have BSD, XWindows, and everything else you find on your linux distro. Best of both worlds, although at a higher price and being locked into one hardware company.
Over the years I tried and tried to replace Windows with a good Linux desktop distro. There was always something that was lacking. Then I found OS X.
I think you will find more and more technical people moving over to OS X, at least *nix ones. Now I have to admit that also enjoy design work, so I really appreciate beautiful things, wether that being perfectly simple elegant code or the PowerBook, so perhaps you should ignore everything I said above.
Parent
Re:Reporter with an agenda? (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm a long-time Mac admin and user. I don't have AV software on my home machine and as of now have no plans to either. I think Symantec, McAfee, Gartner and a few others are teh ones who have a hidden agenda.
All to pr0n you need: http://excaliburfilms.com/partner/mainaffiliate.c
Parent
Re:Reporter with an agenda? (Score:4, Insightful)
Parent
Re:I disagree (Score:5, Insightful)
And forget about the old market share argument explaining why Macs don't get malicious viruses. Don't you think there would be some prestige for any writer who could create the first malicious Mac virus? Especially with Apple and others touting it's security for years? How come it hasn't happened yet?
Parent
Re:What about OS 9 viruses? (Score:4, Insightful)
OS 9 had a ton of viruses and they had even a smaller market share than OS X.
For some reason I don't think market share is related to this.
Parent
Re:What about OS 9 viruses? (Score:3, Informative)
1) OS 9 had hardly any viruses, just like OS X
2) OS 9 had a higher marketshare than OS X
If you see a list of classic MacOS virues (nVir and so on), you have to understand the the vast majority of those date from the 1980s and didn't run under System 7+.
IIS is MORE secure than Apache (Score:4, Informative)
IIS6 has a significantly better security record than does Apache2.
Apache2's vulnerabilities 2003-2006 [secunia.com]
IIS6's vulnerabilities 2003-2006 [secunia.com]
Parent
Re:I disagree (Score:4, Insightful)
As a cross-platform user I'm tired of these popular memes on slashdot. Do you think all those affluent mac users work in creative areas? A number of us work in IT developing and/or supporting software on the windows platform but prefer macs at home.
Let me try to get this through your thick head. OS X has a completely different security model from windows. It is based on a BSD and System V. You will find both open source and closed source unix components on OS X.
There is always a risk of some virus appearing and wiping out your personal data or some catastrophic hardware failure and because of this, you should backup often. It would require a great deal of user interaction to compromise the entire machine as nobody runs as root unlike XP.
Parent
Re:I disagree (Score:5, Insightful)
I think the problem wasn't that Mac or Windows users were any more complacent than each other, but one system was more prone to viruses and malware.
One of these systems had the following problem:
1. Getting spyware by visiting webpage with default security options
2. Getting viruses just by opening or previewing an email
3. Getting a Virus just by being connected to the internet.
Both systems still can have:
1. Viruses from opening attachments from email
2. Viruses from opening files downloaded from the internet
The first set of issues was nothing that you would consider to be safe security practices. That is unreasonable to think the user could not do these things within reason (Yeah... Back when the Outlook express viruses were going around I turned off my preview pane and avoided unknown senders like the plague but this is a hard practice to keep 100% reliable (you know accidentally opening an email from someone you know or hitting enter key at the wrong time).
Yes, one of those operation systems developers did fix the problem with many various security patches, but the other one never had such widespread issues and was usually quick to address any security hole.
I use OS X primarily for my surfing and email, but I still keep my habits from the windows days.
Don't download files from questionable sources.
Don't open emails attachments from questionable sources.
If I don't do either of those, then I believe I should not have to have an anti-virus.
Plain. Meet simple.
Parent
Re:Wow! And I thought I didn't get along with othe (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Why Are Mac Uses Such Dicks? (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
LMAO (Score:5, Interesting)
Building your own box (by which psuedo-geeks mean "assembling six pre-built components into a working PC") makes one sooo technically superior. I mean, you probably have to have like what, a post-grad education to correctly install the MB and insert the PCI cards, right? Those PCs are just so complicated these days.
I used to build my own PCs... about 10 years ago. Then I grew up, got a life, and stopped spending my personal time fritzing around with hardware. I may work in the software industry, but I'll be damned if I'm going to spend my free time doing IT work. Give me a Mac any day.
Parent
The Mac users are mean to me! (Score:5, Insightful)
The appeal for Macs is different for each person, some people like Virginia Tech like to make super-computers, others like to composite special effects, and there are lots of people who just want to be able to use their computer with having the OS get in their way because of shoddy design. And some people just think the computers are pretty.
Stop pretending that Windows users are somehow the salt of the earth while Mac users are elitist, especially considering you use the exact same techniques to try to convince people that Windows or Linux is somehow better.
Accept the fact some people like the Mac, it's effective for what they want to do, and the hardware is not 2x as expensive and you know it and the G5 and Intel Duo Core are very powerful parts of very well-designed machines.
If everyone who had a Mac sold it and bought a PC would life be suddenly better for you? If not, then shut up.
Parent
Re:Huh? (Score:3, Interesting)
That used to be true, but these days, people who know nothing about computers like to use "normal computers", by which they mean MS Windows. In my experience (which is fairly extensive), current Macintosh users break into a couple of groups:
Hey, eMachine, shut your pie hole. (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm not so sure after seeing the new Apple commercials saying how PCs have all of these Viruses; however, Macs are not susceptible to them. This could get more people to purchase Macs and while it might not be as large a target, if the majority of the community isn't being cautious it could be seen as an easy target. You will see outbreaks of Mac viruses. It's only a matter of time.
I think we've already discussed to death that Mac virus security is not due to obscurity but rather due to sensible security practices built in. We've been hearing "it's only a matter of time before a virus brings the whole Mac community to their knees" drivel for years. Still waiting on that service pack?
As for Mac purchasers being more computer savy. I don't really consider the majority of the artsy, yuppies that are the majority of the Mac audiance to be over savy.
I'd have to say that with a Unix command prompt and OS X/WinBlows/Linux dual- and tri-boot capability you're gonna see a lot more fascinating possibilities for tinkering that appeal to true geeks. Perhaps not so much to the poltroons whose idea of originality in computing is to casemod a neon light and window onto their beige hunk-o-junk, or who use their (e)machines simply as pricy game consoles. If that makes me a artsy yuppie for wanting to delve into my computer's innards, then I'll switch my 2600 shirt for a cardigan and my ratty sneakers for penny loafers.
OK, have at me. I can take it!
Parent
Re:Know more about using a computer? (Score:3, Insightful)
You are selling enterprise hardware to companies that don't use DHCP? Also, if you sell "enterprise level" hardware, shouldn't there be some sysadmin on the other end setting it up and supporting it? If you have to explain IP setup to _users_ you or your customers have bigger problems than Mac users who can't find the command prompt.
By the way, you might try to tell your Mac, Linux and Unix users to open a terminal instead of a command prompt.