Dar,
There are viruses and trojans for OS X, and a lot of working exploits for OS X Server and applications that run on top of it (Wordpress, anyone?
) due to the nature of PHP and Perl-based exploits that affect all UNIX-based web servers.
Apple ships OS X with a set of default system services, which are ports of their Unix brethren (PHP, OpenSSH, OpenSSL, BIND, mySQL, ClamAV, Sendmail, Apache, Perl, etc.). Some of these are enabled by default on OS X Server.
Apple's had a history of not patching their ports of Open Source software as quickly as vendors such as Red Hat, Novell/SuSE, or Sun do. Apple was way behind patching the "Kaminsky" DNS bug. They also have been behind in patching the other ports of Open Source/GPL software they ship as part of OS X.
There's been working exploit code for OS X circulated. The last major exploit for OS X was a trojan within a pirated copy of iWork '09 that was circulated on BitTorrent.
Their kernel and part of the userland is Open Source. Their display technology is closed-source, and from what I understand, has some issues. Apple also allows regular users to write to locations on the hard drive that they shouldn't on a standard UNIX platform.
Some viruses are not platform-specific (such as the Wordpress bugs that can turn your machine into a bot given perl, wget, and a few other tools), and have already affected OS X Server.
OS X on the desktop isn't far behind. It's been done, but the real reason why you don't see the viruses for that platform is that it takes more time to craft for OS X or Linux than Windows.
Microsoft just makes it too damn easy, and the other software packages out there that have exploits (Adobe Reader, Adobe Flash, Java Runtime Environment, Firefox, AIM (yes, I have seen working AIM exploit code), Yahoo! Messenger, Skype, and even some AV programs) make it even easier to target tons of Windows PCs and turn them into unwitting zombies.
No OS is perfect. OS X is slightly better than Windows, but not as secure as Ubuntu Linux or FreeBSD. When Apple starts patching their ports of Open Source software as quickly as Red Hat, Ubuntu, SuSE, or Solaris, and fixes their directory permission issues (which while they are better than Windows, are not as good as many Linux variants), then I'll believe it's because they've made it really hard to write viruses for.
The trojans are already there because some OS X users don't want to pay for iWork '09. There are probably trojans within the pirated versions of Adobe CS4 and Final Cut Studio making their way around the various BitTorrent trackers.
Quote:
Originally Posted by dar512
While I'm sure that Apple works hard to make sure that OS X is secure, the real reason that Macs don't have this problem is that people aren't writing viruses for OS X. Virii are platform specific. As Microsoft continues to step on its own whatever, and OS X gains a larger market share, you'll start to see virii for Macs.
On the other hand, OS X is built on top of BSD (a well worn Unix variant). So it could be that virus writers will have a tough time making headway there.
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