Columnist on Mac security

With all the negative publicity surrounding the security of Mac OS X, Apple's recent "Get a Mac" TV ads managed to spawn another round of debates within computer security circles about how secure the Mac actually is. Columnist Arik Hesseldahl of BusinessWeek online points to a recent update from the SANS Institute, which suggests that a rapid growth of critical vulnerabilities in Mac OS X are being discovered. The columnist also cites the "hack-my-Mac contest" where a Mac mini weathered 38 hours of attacks, as well as the two trojan horses that were discovered in the wild which were labeled viruses. "They weren't viruses at all, but rather Trojan horse programs that did nothing more than replicate themselves, and didn't even do that well," the columnist wrote. "Symantec said they had documented only a handful of users actually receiving the Trojan."

Hesseldahl asks if the industry is overreacting to these security issues, and questions the possibility of a Mac infection from a Windows installation via Apple's Boot Camp software.

"As staunchly as I defend the Mac's reputation as a largely secure software platform, I'm not one of those who pretends the potential for trouble from a previously unsuspected direction doesn't exist. But of the many things I worry about happening to the two Macs I use daily, the threat of a virus or Trojan outbreak is not terribly high on the list. At least, not today."

by MacNN Staff