04/10/2006, 2:20pm, EDT
Monday, April 10th
Macs could pose network security risks
"An issue [Mac] users need to be aware of is that in some cases they can be a carrier –- effectively a Typhoid Mary," Bell said. "That is because you can have infected files on the Macintosh that do not infect the Macintosh but at a later date those get transferred across to a Windows machine which they can infect. Macintosh users still need to be scanning for Windows viruses to make sure that they've got clean files and don't have infected files that they can pass on."
Bell said that the issue is based on enterprise policy and training.
"There is a danger that organizations which are 100 percent Macintosh and that are using Windows but are not frequent users of Windows, then they may not be aware of the security issues and could leave themselves open," Bell said.
"Ultimately, organizations need to make sure they're secure and they have to be aware of the security issues that exist for all platforms. [...] It's possible to secure and scan all files that are coming across to the Macintosh at the gateway. If you're running a dual boot system, make sure you've got adequate security on the Windows side of that system. It's just a matter of making sure you are security minded," the executive added.
The McAfee marketing director pointed to rising threats on the Mac platform itself, and indicated that the Mac world is not as responsive as it should be to potential threats, according to the report.
"The overall threat level is a lot lower than the threat level for Windows users but that's changing. In terms of vulnerabilities we see vulnerabilities on all systems out there but most do not attract exploits," Bell continued.
"For the Macintosh, there are a lot of vulnerabilities but often there are no exploits for them and eventually they get patched. But people are slow to patch them and those systems are open to attack. The people who are writing these attacks are not writing as many attacks for the Macintosh systems but that may change in the future as the Macintosh becomes more popular," Bell said.
"In the dual boot situation, when they're booted into the Windows system, they are just as vulnerable to attacks as is the average Windows user."
Filed under: troubleshooting
, 
, 55
, 
, 
, 
, 
, 
Top
subscribe to comments
for this article
McAfee techs should all be thrown in jail for cyber terrorism.
these are the real thuggs and thieves in the flesh.
People don't tend to hold on to programs that don't run on their computer.
Now this does not take into account any Office macro virii, or the whole new twist that Boot Camp and running Windows on Intel Macs adds to the mix... but that's not what he seems to be talking about here.
In his defense, Mac users do tend to be naive and lax when it comes to security and Apple does need to dramatically step up its efforts in this area... but to say that Mac users need to buy antivirus software to make sure that infected files on their computer don't end up in the hand of a Windows user is crazy for the Mac user population in general. The only time this logic makes sense is in a corporate or educational networked environment... where this should be common sense (though it's often not).
Oh, snap!
Still I had to laugh about this one. Is this the backdoor strategy to sell their product? "Come on, if you don't care about your security think about all the poor PeeSees you could infect by accidence!" Ha! As lockhartt already said the .exe files get rapidly deleted on the average mac. And can this guy explain me why the one infected and inactive file on the disk shoulfd be as dangerous as the active file on the PC spreading itself thousand times all over the disk, Email and Internet?