Apparently Symantec released a report this week that claimed that OSX is going to become under threat from viruses and the like as Apples market share increases. From what I’ve read the report acts as though the only thing that has been protecting OSX has been the small market share it has and that if it was given enough market share it would be as insecure as Windows.

But there is a bit more to it than that. OSX isn’t full proof but it is inherently more secure than windows. You need to enter an admin password to run installers, OSX warns you if you double click a document and the application that tries to open is opening for the first time. It has UNIX file permissions which help somewhat towards stopping applications touching what they shouldn’t.

There is also the fact that it is very hard if not impossible to create a virus that spreads on the scale of a Windows virus. 99% of emails that come in containing PC viruses just get caught in Mail’s Junk Mail filter so I don’t see them those that do come in all look the same and anyone with half a brain cell could realise that it’s just a virus. It is now common knowledge amongst computer using people that you should not open a file attached to an email sent by someone you don’t know. And that seems to account for 99% of the viruses I get in my email. Which means that there is just this 1% that gets through. Well, first I’d have to open it. If it was an application I would see it start to bounce in my dock so I could just stop it then. If it was an installer then I could stop there as well.

But there is one thing that I’m missing here. Aren’t all these trojans? A trojan is basically a virus that disguises itself as something else in order to trick the user into running it. So basically a virus has to be able to copy itself, send itself to another computer and infect it all without the user actually touching the virus. Or it has to require the user to open a file saying virus.app and so make no attempt to disguise what it is.

And what is the biggest attempt on OSX so far. It was the Word 2004 trojan. It was distributed via P2P networks (why chance that your trojan will make it through into that 1% of the users mail when you can have the user download the trojan for you). And what did it do? It deleted the users home folder. So what would I have lost if I had opened this. Well, all my preferences, all my emails, all my stored chats and all my music (though I could just get it all off my iPod). All of my vital files reside in folders on the root directory, but others may use the documents folder and therefore not be so fortunate. But this is simple loss of data, which if the users uses back ups shouldn’t be a huge problem. The computer still works. So does this mean that OSX is immune to viruses? No, but as of yet there has been no successful attempt to bring down an OSX system.

And I don’t think it is from want of trying. Virus writers aren’t in this for money, they’re in this for two reasons, to cause as much trouble as they can and to pick up the challenge. Fact is that they’re probably getting bored of Windows by now and they have found most of the exploits and Microsoft has started to patch them all up. So who do they turn to next? Well, OSX or Linux. Chances are they’ll attack Linux first, as it is used on lots of web servers so they can cause a lot of havoc. But Linux is open source and so patches can be made much faster, plus the fact that most people running Linux know enough about computers to protect them. And with OSX users bragging about how they can’t get viruses I’m sure there’s gotta be one disgruntled Virus writer out there getting annoyed by this. Someone has got to try soon. But maybe they have, maybe they have given up.

Thing is that we won’t know until it happens. I like to think that OSX is secure enough so that someone who isn’t stupid enough to open an unknown file should be safe. It makes distributing viruses a lot more difficult than on Windows and it makes bringing down the entire system more difficult than on Windows. So is Symantec telling the truth when it tries to put across that OSX is no more secure than Windows, or is it just trying to scare us into getting Virus protection we don’t yet need. For now I’m gonna say the former, and I’ll change my mind when I’m typing from a spare computer after having my HD wiped by a virus