Digital Trends

Computer security firm Sophos says home users should consider switching to Macs to avoid the onslaught of trojans and malware aimed at Windows.

It might be a backhanded endorsement, but it's sure to raise some eyebrows just the same: in its latest security report, computer security firm Sophos says home users should consider switching to Apple's Macintosh platform simply because it's not vulnerable to te swarms of Trojans and other malware affecting Windows, and, so far, has attracted little malware of its own.

The Sophos Security Threat Management Report summarizes threats seen during the first half of 2006, and finds that Trojans now outnumber viruses by four-to-one, compared to a two-to-one ratio at during the first half of 2005. The most widespread threat from January to the end of June was the Sober-Z work, which at its zenith was responsible for one in every thirteen email messages on the Internet—despite having stopped spreading on January 6, 2006. Sophos also found that viruses are declining in frequency (so far in 2006, one in every 91 email messages is viral, compared to one in 35 in the first half of 2005) in favor of spyware, Trojan horses, and phishing attacks. Sophos software now protects against 180,292 viruses, worms, trojans, and software packages, compared to "just" 140,118 in June 2005.

The seemingly unending onslaught of malware aimed at Windows has led Sophos to recommend home users consider switching to Apple's Macintosh platform to avoid the security concerns inherent with operating Windows. Sophos notes that the first malware for Mac OS X appeared in February 2006 and never spread to the wild, and hasn't engendered a wave of malware targeting the platform; further, Mac OS X isn't vulnerable to any of the viruses, Trojans, worms, and other malware targetting Windows.

"The continuing rise of malware will concern many—the criminals responsible are obviously making money from their code, otherwise they'd give up the game," said Graham Cluley, senior technology consultant at Sophos. "It seems likely that Macs will continue to be the safer place for computer users for some time to come—something that home users may wish to consider if they're deliberating about the next computer they should purchase."

It should be noted that there's nothing about Mac OS X which makes it magically immune from malware—it's just that malware written to exploit Windows doesn't work on Mac OS X. Apple issues regular security updates of its own to combat potentially-exploitable flaws in its operating system and its Unix underpinnings, and the company's security stance has received its own share of criticism for not being sufficiently pro-active or transparent. And, of course, if you have an Intel-based Mac and choose to run Windows—using either Apple's Boot Camp dual-boot technology or tools like Parallels Desktop—your Mac is just as susceptible to Windows malware as any other Windows system.