Security Garbage

I can?t imagine why running any virus scan would take fifteen hours. That is unheard of as far as I know. Certainly no virus scan I have ever run on either PCs or Macs has ever taken that long. If you hard drive contains lots of videos or photos it might I suppose, especially if you don?t have a lot of RAM available. In that case, I would recommend running the scan in safe mode. Doing that will keep un-needed applications from running and having to be scanned. You can also choose/restrict what the program will scan, eliminating videos and photos.

It just should not take fifteen hours to run a scan. That?s excessive.

Ah, you are beginning to catch on.

Remember the "millions of people have run AV for 15 years" quote?

Remember the "Virex was so bad that Apple stopped giving it away" quote.?

15 hours is about average and the user was lucky if he could actually use his machine in that time.

P

I removed Virex and feel fortunate that it seems not to have harmed my old titanium Mac laptop.

It is highly unlikely Virex has done any damage to your laptop. Despite the scare stories you see occasionally here and elsewhere, AV programs do not damage computers. The programs themselves can misbehave, but in doing so do not wipe your hard drive clean or any of the other horror stories you may have heard. They are not capable of doing that kind of damage.

On the other hand, it is not impossible that running a AV scan might do real damage if something about the program conflicts with an already existing problem on the computer that is activated by the scan. In that case, the origin of the problem is not the AV program, but the already existing problem that the user was not aware of. There is simply no way an AV program can delete files or applications. Even if it detects a virus that is an false positive, i.e. not really a virus, it will put it in quarantine, not delete it.

Anyone who claims otherwise simply doesn?t understand how AV programs work and unfortunately that seem everyone who has so far participated in this discussion.

from the way you defend Virex, my bet is on Mcaffee.

Strange how no AV program has, in your eyes, any problems at all. If it is a sub-par program, you blame it on the user.

Could you explain how "the origin of the problem is not the AV program, but the already existing problem that the user was not aware of" an AV program could do this. I would ask other posters but you are the self confessed expert in this field.

Look forward to hearing the reasons and the correct way to use AV against non-existant viruses.
One more thing. Will these wonderful AV programs, once you have explained how to use them, be able to detect a virus on my Mac?

Eustace

Is it possible for AV to see a file as containing a virus when it doesn't?

Is it possible for AV to recommend delete or move the file?

Is it possible for that to be a bad thing to do from the standpoint of other software, or the OS?

It happened to me in OS9, and I wasn't the only one. I see no reason to believe it has changed.


There is ONE reason to have AV on an OSX machine today.
So you don't forward the nasties to your PC encumbered friends.

I'm not that altruistic.


Lampie

If the AV detects a file that it identifies as a virus, it will delete it. That will happen only if the file matches the AV program?s virus definitions. No file already on your computer will match it.

If it detects a file that might be a virus, but does not exactly match anything in its definitions, then it will place it in quarantine. Any file in quarantine can be moved to return to where it was found.

None of this has any affect on application or system files.

To say that the only purpose of having AV on a Mac is to prevent it being sent to someone using a PC assumes the virus was written to affect only PCs and that the PC user does not have an AV product. In fact, almost all do because PC users have no delusions about their computers being invulnerable to malware.

It doesn?t matter whether you care to be altruistic or not. Sooner or later and probably sooner than you assume one of those viruses will be written for the Mac and you will be infected because you supposed the only reason for you to have AV was to protect PC users and you didn?t care to do that.

Every argument I have seen here is what I have seen repeatedly, here and elsewhere. All of them are mistaken, Apple itself is proof of that. It doesn?t rush to fix its many vulnerabilities in both its OS and Safari, 31 on them in the most recent upgrade, because it believes that no one is going to try to exploit those many vulnerabilities. It does so to protect is users. If you suppose users don?t need protection, take it up with Apple. Or do you suppose you know better than Apple?

QUOTE
''To say that the only purpose of having AV on a Mac is to prevent it being sent to someone using a PC assumes the virus was written to affect only PCs and that the PC user does not have an AV product. In fact, almost all do because PC users have no delusions about their computers being invulnerable to malware.''

The other purpose would be to protect against EXACTLY what viruses? Name them. Here. Please. Either that, or please admit that at this moment that is the only reason.

Also, does this mean it's OK to send viruses to PC users? See, I assume that's a bad thing to do, because even though ''almost all PC users have no delusions'', most of them seem to have had considerable experience with viruses, spyware, trojan horses etc. How did that happen if they are protected?

QUOTE
'' If you suppose users don?t need protection, take it up with Apple. Or do you suppose you know better than Apple?''

I'm sure I know better than Apple on many things that concern me personally. Apple is concerned with profit, not me. I submit Apple's recent disregard for privacy as an example. I could name others if you need me to.

Lampie

If the user was doing other work while running an AV scan in the background, no wonder it took fifteen hours. AV scans are high intensity CPU jobs. They can be run in the background, but that is not recommended even for the fastest computers with plenty of RAM.

Scans are usually done at a time when the computer is going to be idle for two or three hours. That is the routine way people run and have always run full hard drive AV scans. Perhaps that is not generally known among Mac users because of course they are not familiar with AV programs and don?t run PCs along with their Macs and wouldn?t have that AV experience either.

And yes, AV programs have been around for at least fifteen years. If you are and have always been a Mac user only, perhaps you don?t know that. it was my impression that many or even most Mac users used PCs at least at the office if not at home. But given the lack of knowledge demonstrated here about AV programs and the threats posed by viruses, worms and trojans and how they work, it is apparent that some here have never used anything but a Mac.

I would suggest that it is about time Mac users familiarize themselves with AV programs because they are going to be forced to do so at some point and for some here that point may involve already having been hit by a virus. The Mac vulnerabilities, including those in Safari, are already known and so are the exploits against those vulnerabilities. Admittedly few exploits as yet, but the number is increasing and are not confined to trojans as some here claim.

What we have got here are some old-time Mac users, dare I say Mac fanatics, who are utterly convinced their Macs are not like PCs and will never be subject to the problems of PCs. In fact, their Macs are computers and because OS X is Unix based does not make them any different from any other computers. Linux is also Unix based and already those users have seen an increasing number of virus attacks as have innumerable businesses that have never run anything but Unix variants.

What Mac users are seeing is a wake-up call concerning the vulnerability of their machines. To ignore that reality can only and will cause them serious problems sooner or later and the way things are going it is going to be sooner.

How does experience with PCs change the fact that future exploits are not in current versions of AV?

My experience is that the update comes after the exploit is released into the wild, but being a Mac user I may be wrong. Am I?

How often do you run the 2-3 hour scans? How much time do you spend afterwards acting on the result? What other steps do you spend time-money-energy on, to protect your PC from viruses?

Why not just get a Mac?

QUOTE
"What we have got here are some old-time Mac users, dare I say Mac fanatics, who are utterly convinced their Macs are not like PCs and will never be subject to the problems of PCs"

I am convinced OSX is not like Windows. Want to argue that?

QUOTE
"What Mac users are seeing is a wake-up call concerning the vulnerability of their machines.

What Mac users are seeing is AV companies trying to use BS to sell product. The (so far) empty threat of problems is not the same as problems.

I'll go out on a limb and say that 10.0 was more vulnerable than 10.4. So as the OS gets tighter, the risk increases? ... or just the hype? This is obviously PR, due to Apple's recent success, or we would have heard about it when OSX came out.

Like my Grandpa used to say, "You can't fix it if it aint broke." It may break one day. Do you know what part will break first?

I don't, and neither do you, with all your useless experience. Do the AV companies? No.

Lampie

>> My experience is that the update comes after the exploit is released into the wild, but being a Mac user I may be wrong. Am I? <<

No, you are not wrong. There is no way an AV can detect a new virus until it appears in the wild. However, since the AV companies are constantly trolling to look for viruses, only a relatively few will be infected before the AV companies provide a definition for it. if the user is checking for definition updates every day and that is now the default and done automatically, the overwhelming majority of users will not be infected. That is the way the system works and has always worked.

>> How often do you run the 2-3 hour scans? How much time do you spend afterwards acting on the result? What other steps do you spend time-money-energy on, to protect your PC from viruses? <<

Scans are usually run once a week. It is the user?s choice. No time is spent after a scan since the scan itself does all the work. The other means of protection is to use a firewall, either a router or a software firewall installed by the user. The latter isn?t really necessary because Windows includes its own firewall as does Apple.

>> Why not just get a Mac? <<

Is that directed at me personally? I have two PCs and two Macs. The latter two are a 17? iMac G5 and an iMac 20? Intel Mac. Do I use AV and a firewall on all four? You bet I do.

>> What Mac users are seeing is AV companies trying to use BS to sell product. <<

My iMac G5 came bundled with Norton AV. Is Apple trying to rip you off too? If you think so, you should be talking with Apple, not me.

>> I'll go out on a limb and say that 10.0 was more vulnerable than 10.4. So as the OS gets tighter, the risk increases? ... or just the hype? This is obviously PR, due to Apple's recent success, or we would have heard about it when OSX came out. <<

The vulnerabilities were all present in 10.0. Only recently has Apple become aware of it because as ever more viruses have appeared in the wild the security companies, not necessarily the AV companies, have been looking for them. They have found plenty and are still finding them. Apple fixes those that are found and those fixes are incorporated into later versions, but Apple will never fix them all until it is alerted to them and as with Windows that will be a never ending process. It is absolutely no different for Apple than it is for Windows, Linux or any OS out there. All of them, without exception, are riddled with vulnerabilities. There are reasons for that, but that is another story.

So you check for updates once a day, but scan once a week?

Everyone who thinks this protects you on a daily basis raise your hand!
Thank you.

Now, everyone who thinks it takes more than a week to buy and install AV raise your other hand.

Good. Now that those who have no clue can't touch their computers, class dismissed.

Since you leave yourself up to a week of vulnerability on any new threat, I submit that I am better protected than you, without any AV on my computer, just by reading the tech news every day.
I assure you, if a real threat is released into the wild, it won't take me a
week to get a digital condom.


LampieTheClown

If ever there was proof that AV software slows down your computer, it's the amount of time it's taking gmcaloon to answer this thread.

Sigh,

Lampie

I do have limited RAM available.

Limited RAM will make running a full hard drive scan take a long time, particularly if you are running it in the background while doing other work on the machine. The usual routine is to choose a time when the Mac will be idle for two to four hours and run it then.

The problem is that AV scans are CPU intensive and use most of what resources the Mac has. The problem is compounded when there is not much RAM available. I would suggest that particularly for Macs that have a lot of photos and videos loaded, probably 1 gig of RAM is minimum.

What many people in the PC world do is leave their machines running 24/7 and schedule the scans to run sometime after they have gone to bed. That way, it won?t matter how long it takes. In any case, the most important thing is to keep the AV program?s virus definitions up to date. If your AV program allows it and it most probably does, schedule it to check automatically for definitions every day. Most days there will be none, but a background check will be quick, a few seconds only, and will hardly be noticed regardless of the amount of RAM available.

It is good to see that some here are familiarizing themselves with AV programs because inevitably all here will be forced to do so eventually and the wiser ones will not have waited until the last minute. Many others will become aware of the problem only after that big, well distributed one finally gets loose and hits them. At that point they will discover just how big a problem it can be.

''Many others will become aware of the problem only after that big, well distributed one finally gets loose and hits them.''

A good point and something that everyone should be prepared for. The ''Big, well distributed one'' will be a ???????? type virus that no-one has ever seen before. It will be so new that ALL virus definitions, in all AV programs, will NOT have it listed in their databases and all machines that take it on board will suffer the consequences.

So, be like the Boy Scouts and be prepared, be running your AV software and you will be.......Oh, that's right, there are NO virus definitions in any Mac virus definition database. Your AV program will not recognize it as a virus. Oh No. We are all doomed, except gmcaloon, who is the only one who knows how to run an AV program. Which one would you recommend for OS X?
Run for the Hills. We are Doomed!

Eustace

Ordinarily I don?t like to clutter these posts with quote backs, but you are spreading so much misinformation that your post needs point by point refutation.

>> The ''Big, well distributed one'' will be a ???????? type virus that no-one has ever seen before. It will be so new that ALL virus definitions, in all AV programs, will NOT have it listed in their databases <<

That is highly unlikely. Almost all viruses are variations on earlier known viruses. The earlier versions usually didn?t spread very far because they themselves have flaws that limited their spread. It is the later variations that become ever more sophisticated and it is those that propagate rapidly. Even then, they do not propagate instantly. They start by infecting a relatively small number of computers and at that point are recognized by the AV companies or security outfits that exist for precisely that purpose.

At that point, the AV companies produce a definition for it that protects all others against it and anyone using an AV product up dated daily will be protected. That is the way it works and has always worked ever since viruses became a big problem for computer users.

>> Oh, that's right, there are NO virus definitions in any Mac virus definition database. Your AV program will not recognize it as a virus. <<

If you had any experience whatsoever with AV products for the Mac you would know that claim is nonsense. Depending on what is out there, my AV program installs new definitions sometimes several times a week and on occasion more than one update a day. More usually it is every couple of weeks. Those definitions are not phony. They are definitions concerning known viruses, worms and trojans already out there.

Perhaps if your mommy uses a PC you could ask her to educate you on this subject. Certainly someone should.

How do you manage to write this stuff and keep a straight face. you should be on Lenno.

You have spent the entire thread defending AV programs for the Mac and telling us all that we don't know how to run them, without once telling us how we should and what program it should be. I see at least two requests for information from you.

If you would be so kind as to print out a list of Mac OS X viruses, that your own particular version of whatever secret AV program you are using, and post it here, I would appreciate it. The list must be very long if it updates the Mac OS X definitions several times a week and on occasion, more than one update a day. I think you are being duped by whatever company you are dealing with and your inability to name names is very telling.

I_B

I have already mentioned how and when to use them. I have already mentioned two AV programs, Norton and McAfee. If is of interest to anyone which particular AV program I use, it is Intego VirusBarrier, itself highly acclaimed by reviewers as one of the best. There are others out there. Go Google.

For a list of viruses that affect the Mac, I would suggest you do a little research at the various AV sites. If you would like additional information, again I suggest you use Google. That is why it is there. I am not here to provide that kind of information as it is readily available elsewhere.

Perhaps if you were to do a little research on these issues . . . ?

Yep. Should take about 2-4 hours, just enough time to grab a coffee, a cab to the airport and fly from New York to Chicago, where, if you're lucky, no viruses were picked up on the plane.

Really, who is this PC apologist who thinks Macs are so riddled with security holes they might as well be Windows computers? I worried more about viruses ten years ago, and only because my friends emailed me corrupted PC files for me to vaccinate for them.

AV software on OS-X is a joke. I downloaded updates to McAfee products every month for two years and finally stopped because they never found anything and slowed my Mac down every day.

When a real Mac problem is discovered that has an effect on several hundred thousand users, I'm sure I'll hear about it on the news, but I still won't be affected because I don't do any of the stupid behaviors PC people are famous for, like having HTML preview panes open in their mail browsers, or following links from junk email solicitations. These people don't have rudimentary self-protection skills and they whine that they got bitten by bugs. That's like pulling your pants down, sticking your butt out, and putting a sign on it saying, "kick me please."

First of all, AV programs do not scan on startup as the default. . They will scan as the default after installing if you allow it to do so. Upon startup they do not unless you schedule it to do so. And you say you used an AV program for two years?

To say I am a PC apologist is absurd. I have two PCs here, but I also have an iMac G5 and 20? Intel Mac also here. It is because I use both that I have some familiarity with virus problems and dealing with them. If you have never used a PC, as I suspect you have not, that would explain your lack of familiarity with the issues.

Nor is it necessary to do stupid things to become infected. If using an AV program and a firewall, doing stupid things is not necessarily a problem because the two programs mentioned will provide protection regardless. That is why they are there and that is what they do.

Your comment that PC users seem prone to doing stupid things is insulting. Of course some do, just as some Mac users do. Mac users avoid the problems associated with doing so only because as yet so little malware is programmed to effect Macs. Obviously that is changing and that is true whether you care to believe it or not.

Nor is it my claim that the Mac OS and Safari are riddled with security vulnerabilities. It is Apple?s claim. If you were a little more informed about these things you would be aware that Apple issued a security update only a few days ago that fixed some 40 vulnerabilities in Mac OS X, Safari and QuickTime. Tell Apple they don?t know what they are talking about. Of course if you are still using the antiquated Mac OS 9 or earlier that may explain why you are so uninformed and also possibly your experiences using an AV product back then with that OS.

Perhaps it is your own computing habits and equipment that could use a little updating.

wasn't it you that said that Mac users were in for a shock because they did not use AV software?
Wasn't it you who said that the Security companies had found plenty of viruses for Mac OS X and were still finding them?
If those two statements are true, why is it that we do not see or hear of those viruses infection the machines of those millions of Mac users who do not run AV software?

Apple recently fixed all the security vulnerabilities that had been reported to them, 31 of them, without any of them having been exploited. However, you do claim to have inside knowledge as to why Apple has allowed vulnerabilities in their OS.

One last question, if AV software is so effective, and if there are millions of PC users running AV software and the security companies are so quick to react, why does a virus like the "I LOVE YOU", SIRCAM, MELISSA, etc manage to infect so many computers.? Does this not make the point that if a NEW virus appears, and the OS X one will have the be NEW, then there is NO initial defense against it. Millions of AV using computers were infected by those three viruses.

Just a thought

P

>> Wasn't it you who said that the Security companies had found plenty of viruses for Mac OS X and were still finding them? <<

No, it was not I nor anyone else here who said that. You should read a little more closely what is being said. What I did say is the security companies are finding increasing numbers of vulnerabilities in the Mac OS and Safari.

>> However, you do claim to have inside knowledge as to why Apple has allowed vulnerabilities in their OS.

Apple hasn?t allowed anything. It didn?t know the vulnerabilities were there. Nor did I claim inside knowledge about why they were there. I said the reason they are there is another story.

Perhaps when your reading comprehension improves a bit, we can carry on a discussion.

Someone using your name posted these quotes:
quote
"because as ever more viruses have appeared in the wild the security companies, not necessarily the AV companies, have been looking for them. They have found plenty and are still finding them"
unquote

quote
"Nor is it my claim that the Mac OS and Safari are riddled with security vulnerabilities. It is Apple?s claim."
unquote

quote
"Apple hasn?t allowed anything. It didn?t know the vulnerabilities were there.
unquote

Saying that the reason the vulnerabilities were there was another story, would leave one to believe that you knew that reason. Not necessarily inside knowledge, but the reason. Care to share?

P