Snow Leopard ships with malware blocker (Wha??)

After years of lording over Windows the fact that Mac OS X doesn’t, or couldn’t get attacked by malware Apple’s next version of OS X, Snow Leopard, is being shipped with as malware blocker. Back in December of last year I got some flack over a post about OS X and how its days of not being a target for viruses, trojans, or other types of malware where numbered.

How things can change in almost a year eh. As many have always maintained Apple’s real security against these baddies was that the user base size of OS X didn’t make it worth malware developer’s time. Something must have changed if Apple has gotten to the point that they have incorporated a malware scanning engine as a part of Snow Leopard.

Ryan Narine at cnet Zero Day has this to say about the discovery

It is not yet clear how Apple is handling the package scans for signs of malicious software.

I have confirmed that Apple is not using the open-source ClamAV engine to handle these scans so it’s likely the company has entered into an agreement with a commercial anti-virus company.

This isn’t the first official acknowledgment from Apple that the Mac operating system may be susceptible to malware. This Web page on Mac OS X security actually recommends the use of third-party anti-virus software to get “additional protection.”

All I have to say is