Best anti virus for a Mac?

population

My wife has a Mac and it seems to be running a bit slow. She does not seem to have a dedicated ant virus software and as I know very little about Macs I wanted to ask if there is a good free anti virus software. AVG or something similar suited to Macs. As it is dragging a bit I would be afraid there might be a Trojan lurking so something that is good for identifying and getting rid of that as well would be useful.

Thanks

900913

http://www.technewsdaily.com/best-mac-antivirus-software/

population

Cheers but they are all 30 quid. Is AVG as effective with Macs?

fergusb

I'd be surprised if it is a virus. There are practically no virus's on Macs. So most of the companies which charge money for Anti Virus are trying to make an easy buck.

As to why the computer is running slow, it could be a number of things. If you access the System Preferences -> Users -> Login Items (I think thats what its called). It lists what applications are started when the user logs in. There could be stuff there which you don't use and would be using up system resources.

noclee

Take a look at cleanmymac and also theres idefrag available. I have tried macscan in the past, but never found a virus for me only usual cookies etc.

http://macpaw.com/
http://www.coriolis-systems.com/iDefrag.php
http://macscan.securemac.com/

Red Alert

I wouldn't bother with any. It will just hit filesystem performance.

LoLth

while there are significantly fewer viruses in the wild that target MAC machines there are still viruses out there. Not to mention that an attachment to an email could contian a virus that wont affect your own machine but could affect anyone you send it on to.

@fergusb: thats an incredibly naive and ridiculous statement to make. "practically no" does not equal "no" and €30 per year may be well worth it when offset against the cost of re-doing any or all of the work stored on a workstation (backups? no use if they're infected too).

FWIW: Bitdefender and Eset would get my vote from my experience of them on a Windows box.

Apple have changed their marketing bumpf when it coems to security:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/apple/9355995/Apple-drops-virus-immunity-claim-for-Macs.html

and an example of a MAC/Linux virus seen in the wild:

http://www.forbes.com/sites/anthonykosner/2012/08/31/new-trojan-backdoor-malware-targets-mac-os-x-and-linux-steals-passwords-and-keystrokes/

from what I've seen, most MAC users are also big Adobe users as well as Java and Flash plugins or full SDKs.

@population: best AV != best FREE AV necessarily

rom

LoLth: If you know nothing about a topic then please don't make yourself out to be knowledgeable about it, because you will just look silly as you do here.

OP
What OS version. Is it less than 10.8 ?
Is flash and java installed ?
Do you download and install software from the internet other than from very well know trusted sources e.g. skype, google, etc ?

If you answer yes to 2 of these then there is a possibility but very unlikely.

Has the hard drive less than 10GB free space available ? - You need about or more free. It is generally the reason why your mac is running slow. Virtual memory uses a swap file that can be quite big at times. On linux this has its own partition but someone thought it would be a great idea to have it on the startup volume on your mac.

PS: there is no mac malware software worth buying or installing.

BrianHonan

Sophos have a free AV for personal use that can be downloaded from its site at http://www.sophos.com/en-us/products/free-tools/sophos-antivirus-for-mac-home-edition.aspx

One of my students loaded it on her Mac this morning and discovered two trojans installed on it.

Also note that while malware is not as prevalent on Macs as it is on the Windows platform it is still a real problem. Apple have included their own built in system for detecting malware since the release of Snow Leopard http://www.macworld.com/article/1142457/snowleopard_malware.html

infodox

LoLth - I actually own a copy of the OSX/Linux/Solaris/Windows trojan mentioned in that article, and it is not really seen in the wild much except for the Windows variant. Unless you are downloading dodgy MACH-O binaries or word documents off .ru websites I do not see any possibility of being owned via it if you are using OSX. It also does not restart on reboot due to a bug in the code.

It is possible the victim got nailed with FlashFake or Flashback or similar, which is known for being pretty resource intensive.

*Might I add the copy I have is for research/reverse engineering. The OSX variant seems to have been an afterthought.

LoLth

infodox wrote: »

LoLth - I actually own a copy of the OSX/Linux/Solaris/Windows trojan mentioned in that article, and it is not really seen in the wild much except for the Windows variant. Unless you are downloading dodgy MACH-O binaries or word documents off .ru websites I do not see any possibility of being owned via it if you are using OSX. It also does not restart on reboot due to a bug in the code.

It is possible the victim got nailed with FlashFake or Flashback or similar, which is known for being pretty resource intensive.

*Might I add the copy I have is for research/reverse engineering. The OSX variant seems to have been an afterthought.

I linked the article , not to say "look at this evil killer malware thats out there" but to show that there are viruses / malware that can affect MACs that are known and in the public eye (does anyone have any estimate on what percentage of virus/variants are not known yet?). It was a quick link to counter the arguemnt of "MAC users dont need AV". My opinion would be, if the delivery method is the same across platforms (java/poison PDF etc) then it stands to reason that the possibility exists that a potentially dangerous payload variant also exists. Whether it is prevalent enough to make newspapers or security bulletins is another matter but then again, tell that to the poor admins that saw their fileserver encrypted by ransomware before the article on the malware was released to warn them of the dangers.