Sophos and iAntiVirus both eat up processor?

Question

Sophos and iAntiVirus both eat up processor?

I had Sophos antivirus installed, and I noticed that quite often in Activity Monitor it was eating up almost 100% of my processor. I uninstalled that and switched to iAntiVirus which, weirdly, is doing *the same thing* - again, in Activity Monitor a process called iavd going up to nearly 100%. In both cases I'm using the latest version.

I've seen a number of reports on these forums of this behaviour with iavd, but I can't seem to see any for sophos. But doesn't it seem odd that *both* of these av packages show the same behaviour, at least for me? Makes me think there is something up at the OS level…

I understand that the standard answer is 'you don't need av with a mac'. That's not how I feel about it. Tried ClamXav once, didn't like it much…

MacBook, Mac OS X (10.6.8)

Posted on Jul 25, 2011 11:40 PM

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Answer 1

Pondini

Level 8

38,863 points

Jul 26, 2011 1:49 PM in response to J. Simon van der Walt

You don't need either, and certainly not both.

ClamXav is fine; it's also the least intrusive if you really want to run something.

There are no viruses that run on OSX. None. Zip. Zero.

There is some "malware," such as Trojans, for Macs, though. But (unlike viruses that can get onto your system without your knowledge), you must approve their installation (via your Admin password) and/or operation (via the "This application was downloaded from the internet ..." prompt).

Appropriately enough, some of these Trojans are included in pirated versions of Apple software, such as iWork!

(If you're running Windoze on your Mac, that's the same as running it on a PC, so that needs all the same anti-everything stuff you'd use on a PC, but not the OSX side.)

For the gory details, see Thomas Reed's Mac Virus Guide

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