As the MyDoom virus continues making the rounds, surely many Mac users are gloating about the fact that other than a clogged mailbox, the virus is doing them no harm. Many like to point out that virus and worm writers ignore the Mac platform due to the small amount of potential victims, and that if the tables were turned, Mac users would see as many viruses, worms, and exploits as Windows users do now. Is that the case, though? Is OS X no better than Windows, but is coasting along on relative obscurity? In an article at BusinessWeek, exactly this topic is explored. From BusinessWeek:
The game changed for Apple when it upgraded from OS 9’s fairly unique operating system to the Unix-based OS X. That meant any attack aimed at Unix machines could affect Macs. And plenty of virus and worm attacks have been aimed at Unix.
In short, now that Apple has Unix under the hood, Steve Jobs can’t rely on security through obscurity. The argument that Apple is safer because of its marginal place in computing’s cosmos no longer applies. With its embrace of Unix, Apple has joined a big family — and it keeps growing, thanks to Linux and other open-source versions of Unix.
Within this family, though, Apple has a unique position. It’s the only decent-size maker of Unix operating systems designed for people who don’t even know what Unix means. Sure, plenty of Mac users are tech-savvy. But lots of folks use Macs precisely because they don’t want to have to learn anything more about technology than how to navigate graphical user interfaces.
Apple needs to protect these people from things that go bump on the Net, without requiring any of the tech knowhow usually required for messy Unix computer security. This isn’t as easy as it may sound. Microsoft attempted a similar feat by merging its Windows consumer code with its Windows server code, also known as Windows NT — and did a fairly poor job of it, judging by the latest virus problems.
There is much more information and thought in the full article at BusinessWeek’s Web site.
The Mac Observer Spin:
We’ve addressed this issue many times in the past. For instance: once, twice, thrice… According to security firm mi2g, the Mac’s position of relative viral-free existence is much more than simple Security Through Obscurity (STO), and that’s something we not only agree with, the facts back it up.
Does the Mac platform get less attention from some quarters of the miscreant community because of its low market share? Undoubtedly, especially from those looking to create havoc on a large scale, such as the creators of the MyDoom virus. At the same time, however, there are so many small-minded, ignorant tools out there that absolutely loathe the Mac and Mac users who would just love to put us all in our place, we feel that this brings its own share of attention to the platform.
This is not to say that the Mac is invulnerable, far from it; we will say, however, that the Mac platform is head and shoulders above Windows in total security. Moreover, if Apple did find itself in the position of market share leader, we have no doubt whatsoever that the company would do a better job than Microsoft in managing security. Apple is far from a perfect company, and it makes plenty of stupid mistakes, but the company has produced an OS that includes security from the ground up, despite having a tiny fraction of the resources that Big Redmond has. That pretty much says it all.