Graham Cluley Windows Quotations

Viruses emerging for the Mac OS X platform is headline news for Apple fans, but they are currently posing far from the level of threat that Windows users face every day. No-one should panic, but this is an indication that hackers are showing an increased interest in targeting the platform.

There are a tiny number of mobile-phone viruses compared to the threat on the Windows platform.

Every month Microsoft releases security patches for its software - and it's often a race against time for companies to roll these patches out across their business before a hacker takes advantage of the vulnerability. A security hole which allows hackers with malicious intentions to run code on Windows or Apple Mac computers is very serious, and all affected users should ensure they have defended their systems.

And Windows XP SP2 is having an effect, what with its primitive firewall and its status center that tells users if their anti-virus signatures are out of date.

They don't need to go to all that extra effort to write a virus for Macs. There are plenty of unprotected Windows computers out there.

The bad news is that most people think the situation is going to get worse for Macintosh users, and more threats will be targeted against the Apple community. The good news is that most don't believe it will ever be as big a problem as the one Microsoft Windows faces. What's perhaps surprising is that there is a hardcore element of 21% who believe that threat attempts against Mac users will not grow.

It's important to consider the amount of hacker activity associated with a particular flaw. And let's not forget that the vast majority of computer viruses are written for Windows computers.