How long will it take for a virus for Mac OSX or the iPhone to be created?
Asked by
juicyful (
110
)
August 23rd, 2007
I love my mac and have done for almost 10 years, i love the fact we are virus free, but how much longer do you think it will last - and what about the iPhone, If they write a virus for OSX, surely they can do it for iPhone too?
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3 Answers
Anything is possible, but the nature of UNIX and UNIX-like operating systems would keep anything from becoming wide-spread.
With such a small market share, it is like throwing a dart at a wall of 10,000 balloons and hitting the one that is a Mac.
Proof of concept viruses exist, but the trick is to get someone to execute an malicious bit of code without the user getting a prompt for the admin password.
Long story short, I am not worried about it.
If you are, try CLAM - X , a free antivirus for the Mac. I wouldn't waste my money on Norton.
Low market share makes the Mac (and the iPhone) a poor target. Somebody could still do it, but it won't ever be a virus epidemic in the same way that Windows is. Even if someone writes one virus, that doesn't mean there will ever be thousands or even hundreds of Mac viruses. It's just not worth it to spend time writing a virus when there are richer targets available.
Given the fact files can not be transfered and saved to the disk, my best guess will have to be, 12 years, 173 days, 9 hours, 56 minutes, and 8 seconds. In other words, never.
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