Macintosh Security per Symantec

[gzzah]

http://www.zdnet.com.au/news/securit...9185387,00.htm

Symantec recently released their bi-annual Internet Security Threat Report. Inside it cited an increasing number of threats against the Macintosh platform, specifically with the number of security vulnerabilities being discovered/patched as well as proof-of-concept worms/viruses and even a rootkit!

Then the Zdnet article goes into angry-PC-attitude and quotes someone who states that Mac users are security idiots (eh, probably most are and just saved by OSX).

I wonder what others feel about the idea that as the popularity of an operating system grows, so grows the number of malicious (and non-malicious) vulnerability researchers. Are we poised to see a rise in Macinfections? Is there a correlation between popularity and vulnerability exposures?

A 15 minute google search didn't come up with any information about current Mac virus authors or PoCs. Does anyone know of any sites that are releasing information about these threats or, as has been thought by most people in infosec, is the cart no longer being pulled by the horse but pushed by Symantec? Are the AV companies crying wolf to sell their product? (no, never!)

[TheCotMan]

Are we poised to see a rise in Macinfections?

Sure. Why not? But, will they be widespread if they are worms? Not as much as worms for windows due to the number of failure per hit when searching through IP Address blocks for Mac OS X users that are running at-risk services without any filters. (Isn't Mac OS X still shipped with no services enabled and available by default anyway?)

If the vector is e-mail, then it is the same problem-- looking for hosts that can be infected.

Is there a correlation between popularity and vulnerability exposures?

This has been the history with many things that are popular, but correlation is not causation.

If we assume a certain percent of people will work on viruses for their system, then everytime the userbase doubles, the number of virus writing people for the next system likely also doubles.

In addition, popularity [can help] increase the rate at which worms can spread.

Does anyone know of any sites that are releasing information about these threats or, as has been thought by most people in infosec, is the cart no longer being pulled by the horse but pushed by Symantec? Are the AV companies crying wolf to sell their product? (no, never!)

Select checkbox "Viruses, Trojan horses, Worms and Macros" deselect all others and search for "MacOS" or you can click here for a URL manually encoded to do that for you. Some of these may not be in the wild, but you can examine each one for more information on them. [example]

[Added content:]
As to your article, it read like fear, fear, fear -> reaction response (buy our product.)
However, if it gets more money into the department to support system security, then hey, more money is more money. :-)