OS X and Malware

OS X, being based on BSD UNIX, has a more security-aware worldview than previous Mac OS versions, though the same is true of Windows NT and its successors. It’s a good idea to treat with skepticism any Mac evangelism that compares OS X in security terms to Windows 9x or ME rather than to NT-derived Windows security models.

Over the lifetime of OS X, vulnerabilities have been found, publicized, and patched (not necessarily in that order). This is as it should be, though when I hear it argued that this is what makes the platform (allegedly) malware-proof, I have to wonder why the same process doesn’t render Windows malware-proof. Part of the answer to that may lie in the fact that the argument carries one or more of the implicit assumptions that: