Apple's Security Pretense

Sure I may be on a roll here about Apple, I swear I don't hate their products, I hate their misdirection. Their products are "fun" as I recently described them to a fellow admin. But would I use them because Apple says they are more secure, immune to viruses, etc.? No.

Simply because there are far less cases on a Mac does not make it more secure. No more than me being a minority make me any less vulnerable to H1N1. When there is less of something, you are going to observe less things occur with that something. When there is more of something, well . . . you get the opposite. It's common sense, or so you would hope.

Quick example, there was a point in time in the last century when people very rarely ever heard of crimes as regularly as we do today. In most cases they had to observe it first-hand. Now, we observe it daily on the news and other media formats. However did it mean these crimes that were rarely heard of didn't occur? Of course not because they did occur. Granted, crime has gone up on a world-wide scale in general and the types of crimes have also increased into the technology realm, a "market" that did not exist a few hundred years ago on a binary level.

But this is the pretense that Apple is playing and has been playing for quite some time now. "We are immune to the viruses that PCs become infected with," or "OSX is far more secure than Windows--it's UNIX based!" and so forth. How long will Apple be able to use that as a crutch though? And is it true? Again, yes and no. Yes they are less affected by the common security problems plaguing Windows and perhaps Linux operating systems, but is it because they are less secure? Well according to the following report, it doesn't seem that is the case. Marketshare.hitslink.com shows the shares each OS has for the past two years, since November 2007. Statowl.com shows another pie chart with similar results. I think it is a bit easy to understand why Macs may seem "more secure" don't you agree? They don't have much market!

Why is this small point of any use to us though? I'll tell you. The question begs to be asked, how many average Mac users have spyware software installed, updated and running? How many perform the checks on a regular basis? How many actually have any anti-virus software installed, updated and running regularly? It would be a tough call to guess on these questions. But if I had to place my money on a bet to see which user has either of these things installed meeting the above conditions, either a Mac or PC user--you bet your lucky stars I'd put my money on the PC user. See here lies the future problem of Mac. As they continue to gather a following of "Hi I'm a Mac!" consumers, they are possibly also setting them up for a future of failure due to being unprepared. After all, why do Mac users need to be fearful of being on the internet when they are "immune" to all the problems a PC has? After all, wasn't it Apple that says, "so you can do anything — without worrying about losing everything"?

So while Apple's Macs begin to no doubt gain market share increases and a bunch of loyal customers, they are indeed setting up to crash and burn when they jump into the lake with the Big Fish who have been swimming with sharks for over two decades. Mac users in general are still green when it comes to having to worry about security, hackers, spyware and viruses.


Proof of this is here in this article at SecurityFocus: http://www.securityfocus.com/brief/864 All of a sudden Apple "encourages" their users to look into using virus software, and you know why. The interesting thing is how they removed the article as mentioned elsewhere at SecurityFocus as well: http://www.securityfocus.com/brief/866

Of course there are plenty of people that will dismiss the "Market share theory" and call it a myth or speculative ideas. One forum on Apple's website had a poster say, 'this myth cannot be proven until Macs have 96% of the market share to compare to Windows.' It may sound reasonable, but it still does not negate the equally reasonable suggestion that Mac is in knee deep prospects of plenty of security problems of their own in the future. Consider the latest article as further evidence of these things being the case and the exact reason security experts and PC users have been saying what they have been saying:

http://news.techworld.com/security/3202856/russian-hackers-target-macs/

It seems all that is needed is some incentive, and Macs finds itself in the same boat as Windows, except with a lot less experience and awareness among their users. In the distant future, to me it seems the "security" pretense that Apple currently uses as a crutch will soon catch up to them. If you are a Mac user, take the expert's advice, do not ignore security just because Apple makes you feel warm & fuzzy for now. Good luck.