Mac Antivirus

topic posted Sat, June 14, 2008 - 2:10 PM by  Unsubscribed
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Anyone use one? If so, which is the best you've found?
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  • Re: Mac Antivirus

    Sat, June 14, 2008 - 2:52 PM
    Well, there currently aren't any viruses for the mac (OSX), and the only malware exists in the for of Microsoft Word Macros or stuff from OS 9.
    "Word Macro: 553, Classic Mac: 26, OS X: Zero"
    So if you don't us Microsoft office, or any classic applications, then all you really need up is your firewall and you should be fine.

    If you're feeling extra paranoid, you can make sure that you don't regularly use the admin account on your computer (ie make a new account, assign it admin powers, log in as that account, take admin powers away from yourself, log back in as you). This will force you to "authorize" as the admin whenever certain hazardous actions are taken (adding applications, changing the OS, etc).

    And then there are certain hacks, like the Terminal hack that suggests you should delete or rename Terminal to keep people from exploiting it easily. I'm not sure there's a list of 'em anywhere, but that's the state of the Mac...
    • Re: Mac Antivirus

      Sun, June 15, 2008 - 4:01 PM
      Also, do NOT use FileVault unless you are very, very careful!
      • Re: Mac Antivirus

        Sun, June 15, 2008 - 4:37 PM
        I haven't heard anything about FV, what's the scoop?
        • Unsu...
           

          Re: Mac Antivirus

          Sun, June 15, 2008 - 4:47 PM
          FileVault encrypts the contents of your documents when you're not using them. You need to use your login password to open them, and if you forget your password you are SOL
          • Re: Mac Antivirus

            Sun, June 15, 2008 - 5:15 PM
            Yeah, but that doesn't sound like "vulnerability" to me. Though, yes, good advice.
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              Re: Mac Antivirus

              Sun, June 15, 2008 - 6:23 PM
              Yeah, I don't think it has anything to do with viurses, although I can be wrong. It seems to me to be more a way of preventing other people from reading them.

              But since you asked, I thought I'd answer your question :-)
              • Re: Mac Antivirus

                Sun, June 15, 2008 - 8:15 PM
                FileVault is supposed to encrypt your entire home directory. This would help protect you in case someone got in to your system. The problem is that if it corrupted the entire home directory, you're screwed. And this has happened to a few people for various reasons since it first came out (in Panther think) . If I remember right one of the issues was backing up to a firewire drive. There were a couple of tribe threads on this sometime last year or so.



                osx.tribe.net/thread/b220...82141ed17b38

                osx.tribe.net/thread/92b5...22a2b6aeb823

                www.ehmac.ca/anything-ma...caution.html
                • Re: Mac Antivirus

                  Sun, June 15, 2008 - 8:49 PM
                  Oh, okay...
                  I thought there migght be some exploitable window when you used the Vault.

                  Yeah, I used to use similar software about 10 years ago, and had this very problem. I guess it's easy to forget past lessons learned and incorporated as habit.
                  • This is the maximum depth. Additional responses will not be threaded.

                    Re: Mac Antivirus

                    Mon, June 16, 2008 - 2:29 PM
                    > thought there migght be some exploitable window when you used the Vault. <
                    There may be an issue when using Time Machine. I didn't read the details but I saw something about it in one of the forums.

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