Hmm
17,000 macs get involved in a botnet and the commenters here practically orgasm. 500,000 PCs get caught and all you can hear is the tumbleweed..
Security researchers have uncovered the infrastructure behind one of largest and most voracious banking Trojan networks uncovered to date. The Qbot (aka Qakbot) botnet apparently infected 500,000 systems before sniffing "conversations" – including account credentials – for a whopping 800,000 online banking transactions. More …
I wasn't one of those commenters but that orgasm is largely due to the fanbois' insistence that their walled garden is immune to malware. If I had a shilling for every comment on the interwebs I've read that had the phrase "Macs don't get viruses" I would be incredibly wealthy.
If you are a Reg regular you will know that not even Linux is immune, Windows is simply a more lucrative target due to market saturation.
Yes, well, you can hear it again and try to understand it this time - Macs don't get viruses. They "get" Trojans, that is malware that the user deliberately installs often against all the warnings the system tries to provide, because they think its something else (usually pirated software) but they do not get viruses. There is no self replicating, self spreading malware out there that can infect a Mac without the user doing something incredibly stupid first, and the fact is all that I need to do to keep my Mac safe is apply a very small amount of basic common sense over the software I choose to install, and where it get it. Ok?
The Mac botnet was created by Mac users installing software which required the admin password.
The Windows botnet was from a drive by download from visiting a web site requiring no action from the user.
But yes, Mac users are as security unaware as other computer users.
I think we've been down this path before and the downvoters have a field day. It's a cultural thing.
Since day one, Apple/Mac haven't had the problem because it was mostly locked down by default and market share wasn't worth effort. Unfortunately, the mindset is "Macs can't get viruses" by default because they as targets, were ignored.
Suddenly, the market has shifted, the users are complacent, and the miscreants see an opportunity for new pastures to exploit.
But they still can't get viruses. The change people are assuming has happened, now that macs are more popular, simply hasn't - as the previous poster says, something like the drive by exploit that happened here simply couldn't happen on a Mac.
What can happen, and could always happen on a Mac or literally any other mildly open computing platform, is the user choosing against all the advice to deliberately install some untrusted software that turns out to be malware. That's what happened with the Mac botnet, and its nothing to do with viruses or the security of the OS, with or without marketshare.
"But they still can't get viruses."
True, by exact definition, viruses are rare on a Mac.
But ask the average user what happened to his system when hit by malware, trojans, adware, bots, keyloggers, or whatever, and you'll hear: "It got a virus."
To the vast majority of computer users, bad stuff on a computer equals virus.
You have about as much chance of educating them otherwise as you have of convincing the press that hacker does not equal cracker.