From reader P.:
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Re: For those who still think Macs are immune ....

I started programming computers in 1971. I've been using Mac's in 1993. I've been repairing Macs since a little after that. So here's my take.

1). Let's use Flashback virus for an example. FlashBack virus showed up in March of 2012. It proceeded to invade 215-million Windows systems (that's about 1/3 of all Windows systems), 8.5-million Android systems, and 600,000 Macs.

Primarily Windows users were infected because of 17 vulnerabilities in JAVA. These vulnerabilities were known well in advance, and the JAVA Consortium did nothing until 14 computer companies (some of which held senior chairs in the Consortium) complained. JAVA Consortium plugged 14 of these vulnerabilities, the remaining 3 were the primary holes used by the authors of Flashback.

Apple got so mad about it they proceeded to write their own JAVA, and proceeded to disseminate it in their systems, while recommending older Apple systems shut off JAVA altogether; also making JAVA shut itself off after each three day usage period, to preclude followup attacks.

Android Systems are composed of a version of Linux with a App player versions of JAVA on top. This vulnerability cannot be erased, since JAVA is intrinsically part of the OS. Because Android is not connected directly to the WEB as much (owing from the fact of it is connected to the Cell-System (many Android phones for example, have no WIFI in them)), the number of invasions was smaller than in Windows. The other saving grace is that Linux, which by itself has strong resistance to invasion, is underneath it.

And most importantly; this was the period where Apple was at war with JAVA and Flash (from Adobe) and after basically winning the argument, most Android has now dropped support for Flash (because it's buggy, unstable, has many malware holes, and uses up battery power at a prodigious rate). And the JAVA wars continue, but folks in the know, use something else besides Android, to stay away from the JAVA problem. After all, the primary use of JAVA on the web, is programs for interactive banking by users to interrogate their own accounts. This will change, and when it does, JAVA can be forever forgotten (a good thing).

Take a look at the Ubuntu phone, does everything Android does and does not need JAVA to work, presenting all the same tools as the desktop version of Ubuntu Linux.

Apple systems got 600,000 infections, almost all of which were phisher attacks (meaning the user had to be dumb enough to accept a request to install something which contained the Flashback onto the system). Flashback had very little luck otherwise. More importantly, Apple proceeded to publish 3 automatically installed updates to the system, which identified and irradicated the FlashBack and related code from the system. This tool was installed in everything since MacOS 10.6.x and later systems. No other computer software or hardware manufacturer took any action whatsoever.

2). When one reads that thousands of Macs are invaded, let's try to keep some perspective. There are 50-million Macintosh Users, and 500-million IOS users. All of these systems use the same underpinnings of MacOSX. A few thousand is not a virus pandemic.

So far, I am unimpressed by the "sky is falling" crowd.
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