Snow Leopard's Anti-Malware Lacks Roar

A security firm's assessment of the malware protection capabilities that was leaked prior to Friday's release shows that Apple's Snow Leopard won't be chasing down much malware.

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A security firm's assessment of the malware protection capabilities that was leaked prior to Friday's release shows that Apple's Snow Leopard won't be chasing down much malware.Mac Security firm Intego, that originally caused the stir when it blogged about Snow Leopard's malware spotting chops, published an overview of the capabilities it uncovered Friday.

Seems to me any vendor that wants a chunk of the soon-to-be growing Apple anti-malware market doesn't have much to worry about for now. According to Intego, Apple's anti-malware only scans for two Trojans. Now, I'm sure Apple will add more, over time, but it indicates modest ambitions at best. Second, the scanning feature only evalutes a small number of applications: namely Safari, Firefox, Mail iChar, and Entourage (for anyone masochistic enough to use that application). Intego's overview can be viewed here.

Why not a peep from Apple about this security feature? Probably because viruses don't exist on Macs (don't you know):

And here's a more recent advisement that touts the lack of viruses on the Mac.

Highlighting the addition of anti-malware capabilities would obviously burst the fantasy that OS X is immune to malware.

If you're interested in my mobile security and technology observations, I can be followed on Twitter.

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About the Author(s)

George V. Hulme, Contributing Writer

An award winning writer and journalist, for more than 20 years George Hulme has written about business, technology, and IT security topics. He currently freelances for a wide range of publications, and is security blogger at InformationWeek.com.

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