Why there are no Mac Viruses

Why are there no Mac Viruses

In this article Philip Elmer-Dewitt discusses the reason for the lack of Mac OS X viruses. He argues that there aren’t any viruses capable of infecting the Mac OS X system. He defined a virus as a program that infects a computer and has the ability to spread to other computers. He argued that spyware and Trojan horses, and spam are not considered viruses. He state that many people argue that the reason Mac OS X has a lack a virus is the lack of consumers. He argue that the real reason lack of viruses is hackers’ lack of interest, due to low consumer base, to some extent, the UNIX base file system and kernel is more difficult to infect, and viruses are going out of style.

He closes by stating that apple my just be lucky, or that it could infect offer better protection for its customers and that Windows 7 may offer similar protection. I like to believe the latter from, what I have heard is that since Mac builds programs specific to one type of computer they are better able to work out all the litter bug that may hinder the systems capabilities, whereas Microsoft develops programs for a wide array of computers e.g. Toshiba, Dell, HP, etc. This correlates to Chapter One in the sense that a company must decide what type of operating system to use the need to weight out what they want to accomplish and other issues such a security within that system. The Company I work (BestBuy) uses Microsoft I believe it’s because it offers a greater compatibility with external aspects of the company.

Posted by Philip Elmer-DeWitt
September 2, 2009 10:53 AM
http://brainstormtech.blogs.fortune.cnn.com/2009/09/02/why-are-there-no-mac-viruses/