Virus Protection On Your Mac? Do You Need It?

Virus protection king McAfee announced that McAfee Virex for Macintosh now supports Mac OS X Tiger?

What? There’s virus protection for Macs? Why? What’s it do? What’s it cost? Who needs it?

First, let me announce that my Mac gets viruses all the time. They’re usually embedded in email spam and aimed at Windows users. My email server uses Mac OS X Tiger Server which has a virus detection system built-in.

I get notified whenever an email message comes through and carries a Windows-based virus with it.

McAfee Virex, on the other hand, is made for Macs and it’s been around quite awhile. Remember, Classic Mac OS (7/8/9) had a few dozen viruses floating around.

Apple even includes Virex as a feature of the .Mac account ($99 a year). What’s McAfee have to say about Virex for Mac OS X?

“Relax. Now Macintosh® users can enjoy industry-leading McAfee antivirus security too! The world’s premier virus detection and cleaning solution for the Macintosh OS X® platform, McAfee Virex delivers comprehensive, non-intrusive antivirus protection against viruses, Worms, Trojans and other malicious code. It’s the #1 antivirus choice for small businesses and large organizations alike.”

Think about it. This is something I can “enjoy.” Forget the fact that there are, currently, NO Viruses, Worms, Trojans or other malicious code floating around for Mac OS X. By forking over $40 or so, I’ll be protected. Until the next time I need to fork over $40 or so.

Click Here for a view of what you get and what you pay for.

I’m a glutton for punishment, I guess. I like to read about such products. More from McAfee:

“The McAfee anti-virus scan engine stops every type of virus and malicious code threat, including macro viruses, Trojans, Internet worms, advanced 32-bit viruses, and even hostile ActiveX and Java objects.

Using technology that drills down into compressed data, Virex is also able to find hidden threats buried in .zip and other compressed file types.”

“ActiveX?” Sounds like a Microsoft-induced problem, and it has nothing to do with Mac OS X.

Still, you can never be too safe, can you? Can you? The new Virex anti-virus engine is built for the future and looks into a file’s code just to see if it ‘could’ cause damage if the code even looks like typical virus code.

“The advanced heuristic analysis used by Virex looks through the code in a file, determining if the actions it takes are typical of a virus. The more “virus-like” code found, the more likely it is to be infected. To reduce the risk of false alarms, this “positive” heuristics approach is combined with “negative” heuristics, which searches for those things that are distinctly non-virus-like.”

Isn’t that like racial profiling? I suppose it’s necessary. One day, some day, somewhere, someone will build a virus for Mac OS X and spread the “joy” our Windows friends have known for years.

My favorite response the McAfee’s news about Virex for Tiger came from MacDailyNews:

“In somewhat related news today, Trek announced training wheels for Lance Armstrong, Snapple announced a new iced tea for goldfish, and Caswell-Massey announced a beautiful mock tortoise hair comb for Steve Ballmer.”