Is Apple a solution…..

….. to the growing malware & spyware threats to Windows users? Some indeed think so, like a so called security research company Sophos(via Net-Security.org). According to The Sophos Security Threat Management Report Update, though there has been a drop in virus/worm attacks, the malwares(spywares, trojans, phishing attacks) which target homeusers at particular for their secret info(like bank accounts, passwords, etc.) have increased. According to the report, the top 10 malwares in first half of this year are:

1. Sober-Z
2. Netsky-P
3. Zafi-B
4. Nyxem-D
5. Mytob-FO
6. Netsky-D
7. Mytob-BE
8. Mytob-EX
9. Mytob-AS
10. Bagle-Zip

It further highlights that none of these malwares are capable of infecting Mac OSX, while all of them work on Microsoft Windows. It says that vast majority of malwares are written for Windows while the first for Mac OSX appeared in February 2006 & that also didn’t spread in the wild. So in the light of these facts, the experts at Sophos advise the home users to switch to Macs to protect themselves!!!!

Yeah, I guess they are right. Because we can safely ignore the security holes present in the eye-candy rich Macs. And the fact that they are slower & heavy on system resources(thus decreasing performance by many folds) should also be ignored. And people also don’t need to give a damn if Macs cost way more than Windows PCs. And I guess there’s no need at all to consider the fact that the software options available for Macs are just about insignificant when compared with the options available for Windows.

I wonder what these self-proclaimed security companies do, staff the best of the idiots available in the market?!! What they are suggesting is that if we’ve to go to London from New York, then we should not go via a plane, since that might go down in the vast Atlantic!!! Instead, we should take a dinghy and row it to London, across the Atlantic, since it got no moving parts & always remain on water, so it can’t crash down!!

Really now, what the damn do these people think? Ok, I concede that for a very short time the Macs are gonna be safe, maybe 6 months, 1 year if lucky. But what after that? The malware writers will go after the Macs since thats what everybody will be using, just like they went after Windows. So then? Maybe these experts will then advise us to switch to Linux. Now after that too is also under attack, we’ll eventually be advised to either develop our own unique operating system else give up computers for good.

Wow, just wow!! Experts of this kind really make me all warm & fuzzy and at peace. We can leave all our IT security worries to them & can safely go to sleep, being assured of waking up in some jungle cave dressed up like a pre-historic caveman!! And if we are lucky, then maybe they’ll also give us a small dinosaur for transportation, since cars can cause accidents & besides they also pollute the environment!!

But then I think, what else these people can do or advise. Mad about free screensavers & free money/lottery prize which they never won, an average home user doesn’t know about the foul creatures which dwell in the bowels of internet, waiting for the gullible to appear. And all the stuff that’s been written till now about how to protect one-self from these things & traverse safely online, its of little to no use because the people for whom that stuff is intended hardly care to read it or even worse, are unsurprisingly unaware about all that stuff till reality bites them hard & then they start looking for help!!