[G4] Virus and Spy Ware detectors

[Ron Steinke]

On 21 Jun, 2005, at 11:21, rich northouse wrote:

Calling on the group's wisdom again -- What is the best Virus and Spy 
Ware detector for a Mac?  Any good free stuff?

I'm not so sure that you really need an anti-virus program. Are you 
using OS-9 or earlier? So far, I haven't heard about any virus that can 
affect OS-X even though Virex keeps putting out updates to their 
program.

I know that someone will say that you should have an anti-virus program 
to prevent forwarding a PC virus that you may have gotten from a 
document that you received from another PC user, but that doesn't 
appear to me to be such a problem. If they insist on using a machine 
that is vulnerable to so much mal-ware, aren't they simply asking for 
trouble? According to statements I have read, there are over 97,000 
examples of viruses (virii?), trojan horses, macros, etc, that affect 
PCs and about 68 that affect Macs. With that condition, why worry about 
you giving something to a PC user when he is more likely to get it all 
on his own simply by using his machine on the internet?

An experiment was done at a university in California with 8 brand new 
PCs right out of the boxes. They were plugged in, turned on, and 
configured for internet access. They had software installed that would 
sound an alert when any attempt was made to access them from the 
outside world. Operators sat down and started surfing the net, going to 
different sites so there wouldn't be any duplication of visits. Within 
48 minutes, all 8 had sounded the alert.

None of the machines were Macs, so the result from the experiment 
probably cannot be used with any degree of certainty. But---it does 
point out that PCs are not safe at all, even when they are brand new.