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Apple dropping Virex support on .Mac
If you've been by www.mac.com lately, you may have noticed that all the Virex links are gone. MacFixIt today is reporting that Apple has in fact decided to drop Virex support because of ongoing Tiger compatibility issues; current Panther users can download updated virus defs through the end of the month. This is extremely unfortunate for a number of reasons. First of all, Virex through .Mac was a steal: a .Mac subscription was less than half the cost of a stand-alone MacAfee 5 seat license, the cheapest license they offer. More importantly, making virus protection easily available benefits everyone, not just the people who have it installed, by slowing down the spread of viruses.There's no word yet on what, if anything, will replace Virex in the .Mac stable, but I certainly hope something does, and quickly. For Apple's sake, I hope they find something to add value to the service, because it's going to be hard to justify the price for a glorified webdav server, since they don't offer connectivity and most people have web an email services through their ISPs. It's also irresponsible, I think, to offer on-line data services, high volume email, and folder sharing without offering virus protection. If nothing else, I hope the put up some decent how-to article for free alternatives.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
CyBeR said 2:45PM on 6-20-2005
Or, they finally realised that selling people a Mac virusscanner is ripping people off because there are no viruses to scan for.
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Michael Str? said 3:04PM on 6-20-2005
I agree with CyBeR. There are virtually no Unix viruses in the wild. Mac OS X malware may arrive some day, but disguised as normal apps.
Nobody runs as root on a Mac. Your standard-issue virus can't really do a lot of harm on a Unix system when it's run by the average user. However, Mac users have by now been contidioned into entering their root password when certain software is installed. That's more or less the only way in for seriously destructive Mac OS X viruses.
I'm no programmer, but I believe that once software has root privileges, there isn't much a virus scanner can do. Could somebody who actually knows something about the Unix internals of OS X chime in? What happens when a user ist stupid enough to give a badly behaved program root?
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Callum said 3:18PM on 6-20-2005
*Screams* I just - as in hours ago - just bought / was con-ed into another year of .Mac - no mention such a vital piece of the bundle was going anywhere from the helpful telephone woman.
I'm only half-joking... virus's on a Mac, hahaha. etc.
Virex was lacking in so many departments. For me - I would have prefered a nice neat button next to the date / clock rather than having to load up that nasty icon in my overloaded dock.
Norton Style Bloodhound... if Virex had this I certainly never felt it run (which I guess is good). But still, a warning message now and then is nice.
What else - well it was slow and unfriendly. But free- so I ran it, for a while.
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Andrew Kaufmann said 3:20PM on 6-20-2005
Well, if you give a program root, it's not like it's unstoppable -- a virus program could still find it and stop it. Also, in theory, soemone could write a virus that messed around with your main user account -- and if you did everything from the same username, as most of us do, you could still do a fair amount of damage.
I don't use a Mac virus scanner, personally, but I think the logic that they're useless is somewhat fallacious. Just because they don't really exist doesn't mean they couldn't START to exist. There should be good Mac virus scanners so you can have that option. I, personally, choose to take a calculated risk weighing the cost of a virus scanner and the odds of me getting one (especially since I know better than to give root access to any old program that asks for it). I'm sure there are many people that don't want to take that risk, and they need a good virus scanner.
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Metryq said 3:20PM on 6-20-2005
Think Typhoid Mary -- the reason for a virus scanner is so that Mac users do not unwittingly pass viruses on to users of susceptible systems.
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ZuDfunck said 3:24PM on 6-20-2005
I agree the Virex was the only reason for me to try .Mac and when I got Tiger I had heard Virex was Gone. No reason for me to get a .Mac subscription now!
By the way come to this site and tell me where have all the Hippies gone...Thnx
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Scott Gardner said 3:27PM on 6-20-2005
We saw this coming, didn't we? I pre-bought the Tiger upgrade. I got the software the day before official release. At that time, .Mac site showed Tiger downloadable without refererence to Tiger/Panther, etc. But when I went to download, it failed. then a few days later the "(Panther Only)" disclaimer appeared. I called Mac Tech Support, and after much hassle (they bounced me back-n-forth between TS and customer support, a different department)--they actually tried to convince me that taking away Virex was a good thing for the .Mac program!--they finally conceded that I could download the previous version of Virex, which would work with Tiger. They also surprisingly told me that Virex is really unnecessary because there aren't really any viruses out there targetting Mac OS X. Can you believe it?!? I just hope that was one isolated idiot's opinion, and not some canned response handed down to him by management. I suppose that is relatively true, but then again hindsight is 20/20, and having come from PC/Windows hell, I can't bear the thoughts of similar experiences again now that I'm in Mac world.
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Jay Savage said 3:48PM on 6-20-2005
Michael and cyBeR:
It's time for some basic eduaction here, I think. First, see my comment to metryq. Furthermore, macro virii and trojans don't care what platform they're run on. Well, some do, but esentially an unsecured MS Office installation is a mini-OS breeding ground for destructive applications and data loss. If you don't use Word or Excel files or pass them on to other people, fine. If they show up in your inbox, though, scan them.
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Jay Savage said 3:48PM on 6-20-2005
metryq:
Exactly. Virus software is about being a responsible netizen. It's self preservation, too, of course. Every windows virus I send along slows down the network I'm using. I may not lose data from viruses, but I'm sure as heck affected by them.
That, and the best way I can think of to ensure we get a Mac virus in the wild is to be complacent.
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dogfriend said 3:49PM on 6-20-2005
You may want to consider ClamXAV which is a freeware virus scanner. It is compatible with Tiger. It scans for Window viruses only since there are no OS X viruses yet
I had Virex installed, and I scanned a few times but never found anything. I removed it after installing Tiger because of the reports of problems. I have been using Macs for over 10 years and have yet to see a virus, even on System 7, 8 and 9.
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Derek said 4:08PM on 6-20-2005
Virex was a great app back when it was 6.5, but I forgot to keep it before a fresh install and forced upon 7.0, which turned in to a bloatware system resource monster. It acted more like a worm than a scanner in 10.4, so I uninstalled it. I wouldn't mind keeping Virex, but only if they brought back the useful 6.5.
This may be a precursor to built-in virus support in the OS. I heard Microsoft will do that as well in Longhorn. Apple has just one more year (and a half or more) to get it within their next OS revision before Longhorn.
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Joshua Ochs said 4:14PM on 6-20-2005
For all of those Mac viruses, right?
Um...
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Kevin Ballard said 4:16PM on 6-20-2005
I've never seen the point of virus scanners on the Mac. There's no OS X viruses. People bring up the "Typhoid Mary" argument, but I don't understand that. Why would I send windows viruses along to other people? The only way for a windows virus to get to my computer is via email, and I don't forward email on to other people (at least not blindly). Maybe if I used Word, a macro "virus" in a word document could at least be run on my computer, but I was under the impression that the word macros lived in a sandbox, so they can't really do a whole lot.
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pedro said 4:39PM on 6-20-2005
I do have to say that .Mac is getting a little long in the tooth. Considering we pay $100 (!) a year for the privilege, .mac should at least be the equal of free sites, such as gmail and Flickr. Maybe apple could offer true speedy web backup/storage, a 1 gig of mail storage and perhaps free blogging space. I'm just thinking of -something- that would make it worth my while.....
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Andrew Kaufmann said 4:47PM on 6-20-2005
I'm with you, Pedro. .Mac isn't that competitive, in my eyes. The convenience is great, but I got a webdav account on http://www.dreamhost.com for less than .Mac -- and it has more features. Sure, it doesn't offer the same ease of use, but it's a far better deal.
(And yes, dreamhost does give kickbacks for referrals -- but I didn't provide any information for you to use me as a referral, so I'm not making this post looking for some dreamhost referral money.)
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Michael Str? said 5:24PM on 6-20-2005
Jay,
Please, don't tell random people on the internet to go educate themselves.
But perhaps my first post was a little bit up Troll Alley. I merely wanted to point out that Common Sense (TM) will protect you from just about any threat you may come across on the internet.
Of course, if you want to forward screensavers, .docs and .exes to people on Windows who don't use AV-software, go ahead. In that case, I agree that you need Virex or an equivalent.
For most people on a Mac, I still maintain it's overkill. Keeping backups is mandatory anyway if your data is worth anything to you, so data loss shouldn't be that much of a problem.
Just for the record, I have used some 20 operating systems in the last 16 years, and never, ever even come close to a virus infection -- sans AV-software. However, that number includes some Windows Betas, too, so I probably just got lucky :-)
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Blue Balloon said 5:36PM on 6-20-2005
I thought that's funny when I realize .Mac offer Virex in first place. I was like.. umm ok? I test it and have it scan in my worst way. Nothing found. And decide never touch that program anymore. Disable it. Go away!
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Andrew Kaufmann said 5:51PM on 6-20-2005
Even the most educated of users can get a virus or trojan horse. You can get them through backdoors in poorly coded software (see Windows), and even the security professionals can make a mistake.
When I was fresh out of college, at my first job at a software company called Micrografx (since bought out by Corel), on my very first day one of my bosses got a virus and accidentally clicked on it in her inbox. So I got an attachment from my boss -- I didn't think twice. It was my first month on the job, my boss sent an attachment, I shrugged and opened it without even looking at the extension -- despite being a computer science major that knows better than to open strange attachments. I just had a brain fart at that moment.
So I ended up sending a virus to every customer I had contacted -- and I had just contacted a bunch because of a marketing survey we were doing.
Moral of the story -- anyone (particularly me) can have a brain fart. Even if you're sure you know better, and you're sure Macs don't get viruses, it just can't hurt. I was on a PC during that story, but the point stands.
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Kevin said 6:10PM on 6-20-2005
Michael(comment 3) >Could somebody who actually knows something about the Unix internals of OS X chime in? What happens when a user ist stupid enough to give a badly behaved program root?
You could trash the system pretty badly. It's all a matter of how the virus writer chooses to go about it. There are any number of ways to keep it from booting up, and there are ways to force a reboot, there are ways to return it to erase your home folder(permanently, even), and you could probably format the disk(DON'T try this: "sudo mv / /dev/null&; sudo /sbin/reboot". That's just what I came up with on 3 seconds notice). That prevents the computer from starting and then tells it to rebooot.
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Callum said 6:20PM on 6-20-2005
Metryq & Jay, No. Virex doesn't scan .exe's why would it. If I recieved (on my mac) a nasty Windows virus (i.e sent from a friends buggered up Windows box.. thing) It would just sit in my inbox... it'd try and execute or do something milcious - but it wouldn't get very far.
Virex would not detect these virus', nor would OS X execute it- if you want to stop spreading virus' - buy a mac! Right guys? I think i'm right, but I'm no programmer!
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