Internet Security for Mountain Lion

SachaJ

Hi all....

Made the leap over the weekend and ordered my first Apple computer, a Macbook Air. Big jump from Windows but looking forward to it. I'm sure I'll be in and out of this forum with loads of questions.

First up, what do you guys use for Internet Security? For all my Windows based machines I'm using Avast! Internet Security which I'm pretty happy with. They don't seem to do a full suite for OS X though, only anti-virus.

So what's the best out there?

drunkmonkey

I don't use any. Never have done, never had a problem.

Colonel Panic

There's an app called Little Snitch that lets you control what accesses the Internet. It seems popular but I've never used it personally.

SachaJ

drunkmonkey wrote: »

I don't use any. Never have done, never had a problem.

Really.... is Malware not an issue for OS X?

What about anti-virus?

Sad Professor

I've been using Macs for over a decade. Never used any anti-virus or security software of any kind, nor needed to. Most longtime Mac users are the same. Viruses and other malware aren't really an issue on the Mac at the moment, but former Windows users often like to run something anyway to put their minds at ease. It's up to you.

Little Snitch is an outbound firewall and is mostly used for stopping apps from phoning home. It's particularly popular among software pirates, but people use it for other privacy related reasons as well. Never had use for it personally.

SachaJ

cheers, thanks

firkin

If you install Java, make sure and disable it in your browser [note Java and Java Script are two different things]. For a belt and braces security you could also disable it between uses on OS X. http://osxdaily.com/2012/09/08/how-to-disable-java/

Loads of people seem to be bitching about Java of late but personally I couldn't live without all those great Open Source apps that use Java.

Whenever I am unsure of the trustworthiness of an app I scan it at VirusTotal before installing.
http://www.virustotal.com/

If you are interested in LittelSnitch, TCPBlock is a free similar app.
https://tcpblock.wordpress.com/

Liameter

If you avoid using Java and Flash, you greatly reduce the possibility of future problems. I haven't had a problem in 25 years. I don't run any monitoring software as I don't want to slow my Mac or cause problems. (Many OSX problems are caused by so-called AV software.)

firkin

My new favorite mac security app. Well its not really an app it just sets up OS X's built in Folder Actions to let you know when a few key system folders have been changed. Simple and clever.

Its been getting a bit of coverage:
https://www.macworld.com/article/2010547/mac-gems-automatic-launch-object-detection-lets-you-track-background-processes.html

http://lifehacker.com/5946887/automatic-launch-object-detection-tracks-what-your-macs-doing-behind-the-scenes

The "app" itself:
https://www.circl.lu/pub/tr-08/

Liameter

For me, that would be just another nuisance nag like "Little Snitch". I have enough stuff running in the background without adding to them. But each to his own.

firkin

You'd want to be installing a lot of apps, quite frequently, for it to be a nuisance like little snitch

Fysh

Sophos do a free home edition for Mac, though I have occasionally seen some claims of performance issues caused by it. (Some of them I've verified, others have been more a "straw that breaks camel's back" ie Sophos was only the most recent of a bunch of badly configured crapware people had installed that caused problems).

As a sysadmin the general attitude to system security from a lot of mac users fills me with horror, in much the same way that the Tiger era advert claims that OS X was "uncrashable" did. Historically Mac users might not have been widely targeted by malware, but as a growing market of people specifically perceived to be relatively wealthy amongst computer users whose OS of choice defaults to using accounts with administrator privileges on a daily basis, who will also likely be using AppleIDs configured to make credit card purchases via iTunes, it is likely that the number and severity of attempted exploits will increase over time.

Aside from protecting your own system, another reason for considering installing AV software is to ensure that you don't end up passing on files carrying Windows-only infection payloads via removable media or email/file transfers to others. This is the reason that many webservers will be running a LAMP stack but still have some form of AV installed.

Liameter

Fysh wrote: »

others have been more a "straw that breaks camel's back" ie Sophos was only the most recent of a bunch of badly configured crapware people had installed that caused problems).

I've seen that, too. Unfortunately, those Mac users who have the least understanding are the ones most likely to install conflicting crapware. That's why I recommend all my friends not to install anything unnecessary that runs in the background. If you really really have incurable paranoia that requires "AV Protection" then don't install "Little Snitch" or "Mac Keeper" or similar. They will almost certainly conflict at some point and cause problems. Any software that automatically "monitors" what is happening or offers to "clean" your Mac also falls into this category of "crapware" in my experience. I've had to help friends remove them when problems arose. You DON'T need them. MacOSX is designed to do it's own "housekeeping".

Fysh wrote: »

Historically Mac users might not have been widely targeted by malware, but as a growing market of people specifically perceived to be relatively wealthy

Well-meaning people were saying that back in 2000. The truth is that the risk is still infinitesimally small compared with the risk of acquiring Windows malware. The latest MacOS provides protection against known risks and you can't effectively protect against unknown risks, so there's no point in installing any extra "protection".

Fysh wrote: »

Aside from protecting your own system, another reason for considering installing AV software is to ensure that you don't end up passing on files carrying Windows-only infection payloads

That rather defeats the object of owning a Mac. If you use Windows, it's up to you to protect your PC. A Mac needs no such extra "protection" and there's no way I'm installing anything simply to protect a careless Windows user. But again the risk of my inadvertently passing malware on is so small that it's not worth considering anyway.

In short, I'm not installing any extras that could screw up my Mac. I've used Macs for over 2 decades and never had a malware problem. If anything significant appears in the future, I'm sure I'll read all about it before it affects me. My only concession to security is to switch off Java in my browsers and to run behind my router firewall.

Fysh

I'm going to politely agree to disagree and leave this thread rather than go through the same old "macs are inherently secure, I've never had a problem and this counts as statistically valid proof that no malware could ever exist for them in future" conversation. I've had it many times, and I doubt either of us will change the other's mind

Liameter

You are absolutely welcome to disagree. I can only go by my own experience and that of several hundred other Mac owners on the email list of which I'm a member. Every one of us has "heard of malware problems" but none of us has actually experienced them personally or knows any Mac user who has.

I have, however, read "virus" reports from "newbie switchers" to Mac from Windows who thought they had a "virus" but, on investigation, had nothing of the sort. They simply didn't understand how to use OSX and had done something amazingly stupid such as running Skype from within its installer disc image (.dmg file) instead of installing it. This invariably causes the system to slow down horrendously but it's not a "fault" and certainly not a "virus". It's simply doing something that was never intended to be done.

It's the equivalent of dragging a Windows application to the trash to uninstall it. That's how you do it on a Mac but try doing it in Windows and you'll have a problem!

As for Macs being "uncrashable", that's clearly untrue. Macs use pretty much the same hardware as any other PC. Bad RAM, bad Hard Drive and conflicts between poorly written Apps and kexts can all cause complete "lock up". However, in the days of "Tiger", the MacOS was somewhat more stable than the Windows counterpart.

BUT we all (I hope) recognise that Windows OS has to run on just about any combination of hardware, whereas OSX has a very limited number of options, as anyone who has built a "Hackintosh" has quickly discovered. So Windows software, to be reliable, has to be better written than OSX in order to cover all possible hardware combinations without becoming unusable "bloatware". My guess (and it's only a guess) is that this same versatility makes Windows more vulnerable to hacks of various kinds, whereas OSX with its inherently secure (compared with earlier MacOS) Unix base should be less vulnerable.

Anyway, yes, install whatever you think necessary but think very carefully about possible conflicts when two "background" apps are doing similar things.

Sierra Oscar

I havent run any anti-malware program on a Mac yet - although to be fair I have not run any third party real time protection software on my PC over the last decade either. I practice safe browsing, I very rarely run into any issues.