$25k Mac Virus Contest Announced

$25k Mac Virus Contest Announced
Posted :: Mar 28, 2005 by Antares

Virus writers, start your engines!

Well, not really. The contest was cancelled shortly after being announced by the Mac developers at DV Forge, stating legal issues and concerns put forth by the larger Mac OS X community. However, Jack Campbell, the DVForge, Inc. CEO, held firm in his beliefs regarding Apple's UNIX security:

I have been convinced that the risk of a virus on the OS X platform is not zero, although it is remarkably close to zero.

The contest involved infecting two stock Apple machines on the internet with a harmless virus.

The contest came in response to statements issued by Symantec Corporation this week, claiming that Apple's virus immunity is a result of small marketshare. Campbell even taunted Symantec by offering $50k if it was accomplished by one of their employees!

Although the marketshare arguement remains popular, there is little evidence to suggest this is the case. Other arguements are a lack of interest in hacking OS X and Apple's small presence in enterprise markets.

Less subjective evidence is found in UNIX itself; root-user structure, administrator passwords, and firewalls enabled by default all contribute to UNIX's greater security.

Slashdot has called Symantec's logic "technical-equivalence propaganda," as Mac users speculate that Symantec's true intentions were to spur sales of its own security software by issuing the statement. Market analysts have been expecting a jump in OS X marketshare, resulting from Apple's new Mac Mini offering and the iPod "halo" effect.

The security record for Mac OS X stands at zero viruses and a number of minor security loopholes which continue to be patched as they are found.

Mac OS X is the most popular implementation of UNIX worldwide, and is slated for an update (codename "Tiger") by the first half of 2005.

-- Antares