Anti-virus creator and guru Eugene Kapersky has declared that Apple is ‘ten years behind’ Microsoft when it comes to security and that the Flashback malware was only just the start, Computer Business Review reports. Speaking at Info Security 2012, he also added that Apple will have to change the way they issue their updates after the recent malware attacks.
I think they are ten years behind Microsoft in terms of security,” Kaspersky said. “For many years I’ve been saying that from a security point of view there is no big difference between Mac and Windows. It’s always been possible to develop Mac malware, but this one was a bit different. For example it was asking questions about being installed on the system and, using vulnerabilities, it was able to get to the user mode without any alarms.
“Apple is now entering the same world as Microsoft has been in for more than 10 years: updates, security patches and so on,” he added. “We now expect to see more and more because cyber criminals learn from success and this was the first successful one.”
“They will understand very soon that they have the same problems Microsoft had ten or 12 years ago. They will have to make changes in terms of the cycle of updates and so on and will be forced to invest more into their security audits for the software,” Kaspersky continued.
Whether Kapersky, who is the CEO of his namesake antivirus company, is simply trying to get a larger customer base on the Mac we will never know, but it seems fairly obvious to me that at least for now the reason there are not many anti-viruses is that there aren’t many active viruses to be dealt with.
Something like Flashback is a rare occurrence, and anyway it exploited Java’s vulnerabilities, not OS X’s. That wasn’t really Apple’s fault. And unlike Microsoft, they came out with a fix shortly afterwards. Kapersky’s argument is a bit hollow, even though he will never admit it.
