Norton on Mac?

No, they don't, not at this time; at least in the wild. if you did find one you should tell one of the securities labs who employee computer scientists to look for signature changes in software and report these finding to computer corporations daily, because they haven't found any yet.

You have not lost documents on your Mac due to ransomeware infections because there are no ransomware infections on mac at this time.

If you would like to view the forum archives there are no shortage of posts where users reported system issues that could be traced back to Anti-Virus products for Mac. In many cases these products either threw false positives at legitimate software or instructed users on destructive solutions when there was no problem.

If you want to use AV products, run Windows. AV products from "reputable" windows vendors offering these same products for macOS are not offering you a product that has anywhere near the development hours or has Apple given them any assistance with their product, they are rogue software, they interfere with OS X's ability to clean itself - avoid them.

Keep your mac up to date with securities patches and OS updates from Apple; this and smart browsing habits are the best policy to keeping your mac defended from compromises.

LEFBE wrote:

You're clearly right, however, not everyone is a computer scientist or an apple fan.

All information in this article are nice, and logical.

However, prevention is better than cure and there are free solutions, such as sophos home or other that avoid user errors.

Years of posts on this forum actually state these products cause far more damage than they purport to fix and in some cases may be worse than an actual attack. Secondly their behavior if they encounter an actual malicious threat has never been explored outside of a controlled environment. Don't take my word for it, the mods dont prune threads and you can go back years or days and see the same issues repeating over and over.

by definition you are right about the ransomeware, but the ones I know of were facilitated by compromised Apple ID's, not the OS. If the ID's were not hacked on Apples systems then they were likely guessed using the same email/combo from another compromised site used by the owner (facebook, twitter, yahoo, etc). 2FA was introduced later as a preventative measure but the hack itself was not happening in OS X/mac OS and an AV product looking for signature changes would not necessarily find it, otherwise it would be preventing a feature that was designed to lock a missing or stolen device, much like LSD was used as an elephant tranquilizer, but researchers couldn't figure out why the elephants were singing along to "In a Godda Da-Vita" until they realized they were drinking the same stuff.

if you have an interest in this you should check out

https://objective-see.com/products/ransomwhere.html#anchor_0x0

I will probably spark some ire with my fellow volunteers here but at least the developer does come clean on CPU bashing by this software, which he offers free and without adds.

Malware is not a separate type of threat. The term malware is short for malicious software and refers to any type of software you don't want on your computer, of which a virus is one type of malware. I’ve read many articles where Mac security professionals point out Mac viruses, which when you read what they are, they’re all Trojans. These, um, "professionals" should turn in their credentials. You can't get something that has yet to exist on the Mac OS. A professional should never, ever, use the term "virus" as a catchall term.

A general description for each:

Virus - can infect other directly connected computers or drives by copying themselves to them without any user interaction necessary. These do not exist in the Mac OS. A virus needs direct sight of the next device or software it's trying to install, or attach itself to.

Trojan - software that requires the user to do something to get it installed. There's lots of these. Especially on illegal file sharing sites where you download cracked versions of expensive, commercial software. Virtually a guarantee that if you install such software, it will also install some of the nastiest malware with it. Such as a keylogger, or back door. Adware actually falls under this category since most of it installs with other software you download from legal sites such as softonic.com and downloads.com. It's annoying when it gets on your system, but at least it isn't dangerous - yet. Some of the ads generated by adware are outright fraudulent. Such as the plethora of scare tactic ads used by the makers of MacKeeper.

Trojans need to be willingly (or unwittingly) installed by the user. Often, you don't know you're installing one because it's bundled in with something else you do want installed. Either way, even though you've downloaded the Trojan, there's still nothing for the AV software to "see".

Now you install it. Still no reaction from the AV software. The Trojan is either now already active, or you run the app after installing it (because it's disguised as something else you thought you wanted). And still no reaction from the AV software. Isn't this what it's supposed to do, you think to yourself?

No. Neither the OS or the AV software is going to stop you from using your computer as you see fit. Even if the AV software sees it (and eventually may), it will be a day late and a dollar short. The Trojan is already on your Mac and the AV software did nothing to stop its installation, or even warn you it had been installed.

Ransomware is out there, though the only two or three known variants ever found have been patched against. In reality, ransomware is simply another Trojan since you have to download, install and run it. It can't get on your Mac by itself.

The latest version of MalwareBytes for Mac has a function to try and halt ransomware. Like standard AV software, the full version runs in the background all the time. Except, it's not watching for viruses (except maybe to let you know a Windows virus came in with an email). It's mostly watching for an app that is suddenly trying to encrypt your files. MalwareBytes will then do its best to shut the app down. But as mentioned, what known ransomware there is has already been patched against at the OS level.

Worm - smarter than a virus. They can search out other computers on a network all on their own and attempt to infect the ones it finds. The only known (and now long dead) worm was Oompa-Loompa. Also known as Leap-A. It first had to be installed by a user as a Trojan. It then looked for other users to infect across a network who were in your Messages account. With Unix in the way, it couldn’t install itself in the remote computer and would cause an admin password box to appear on the targeted Mac. Deny access, and it couldn't do anything. The user had to be dumb enough to allow a process to continue without thinking about why an admin box appeared out of nowhere in the first place. While there were likely at least a few more, the official reported instances of infection by Oompa-Loompa was a grand total of 50 Macs.

For now, and has been the case almost entirely through the Mac OS’s existence, defeating malware is to use your brain. All known malware out there right now are Trojans. You have to download and install it. Gatekeeper recognizes some apps and will stop them from running, also posting a warning to delete the app/installer. Anything else will blow right through no matter what AV software you're running, or how many. They are useless. They are designed to try and stop automatic processes, such as the thousands of such viruses in Windows. Trojans bypass all of this. You choose to manually run an installer or app. It doesn't matter where it came from. The OS and AV software can only do so much to protect you from yourself. When you choose to run an app, either can only sit back and say, "Well, okay. You're the boss." Either may detect a problem after the fact, but it is of course too late, then.

The only thing you can truly call a virus that still exists are Word and Excel macro viruses. And those are almost 100% Windows malware. That is, the macro can't do anything to harm a Mac since the payload only runs on Windows. And unless you've changed the default settings in Word or Excel, if you happen to get an infected document sent to you, the macro can't run until you allow it (either will warn you the document contains a macro and gives you the option to run or block it). They fall under the virus category because if you allow an infected macro to run, all macros are automatically stored in the Normal template. After that, every new document you create carries the macro virus since they all start from the default template.

At this time, all AV software is nothing more than a drain on system resources. If you’re thinking is to be preventative against new threats, that is also a waste of time. No system can stop the unknown. If you download and run a new, unknown threat, neither the OS or AV software will see a problem with it since it isn't recognized.

There are numerous topics on these forums alone that prove how pointless AV software is on a Mac. My favorite? The person had three different types of AV software installed and running. And yet, an EtreCheck report showed that their Mac was loaded with adware and other garbage. Yeah, the AV software was working just great!

Reportedly, a virus that could affect the Mac OS has been created in research labs where they look for flaws in the OS, then report their findings to Apple and Microsoft so the OS can be patched before crooks find these same openings. No Mac OS virus has ever been seen in the wild. At least, not yet.

Hello JimmyCMPIT,

Sorry to disagree with you, you indicate that Mac has never been attacked by ransomware, however :

MacRansom, Oleg Pliss (discovered May 2014), KeyRanger (discovered March 2016), Patcher (discovered Feb 2017) are Ransomware, now detected by Apple system however, they did some damage.

Eleanor, Xagent, Popcorn Time, Pegasus exist too, since 2016 more and more virus / malware or similar are discovered.

As I said, and it is a reality, there is a lot of virus / malware and other on Windows System, but some attacks also target Macs and Linux.

They are certainly less, but not nonexistent.

An antivirus does not only protect against a virus etc ..; it offers web protection that for example avoids hijack, recovery file after ransom attack or detect exploit on tiers products like office (lot of person using office) or Adobe.

My answer is not related to security and Apple products, but more as an indication. You like me do not know what the end user is doing with his Apple hardware, and it's better to prevent than correcting.

Hello miulli12

Basically you can install any know Antivirus Vendor like Norton or other (it depend if you have a valid licence)

On my side, I use Sophos home (link below) it's free and if you need more security it's some $ by years.

https://home.sophos.com/fr-fr/

Of course you have less viruses on Mac however, they exist, and I prefer to pay few dollars and stay safe than crying because I've lost my documents after ransomware infection

I hope this information will help you

LEFBE wrote:

Of course you have less viruses on Mac however, they exist, and I prefer to pay few dollars and stay safe than crying because I've lost my documents after ransomware infection

There are currently no known viruses that affect Macs. There is malware (usually adware) but, that's a different thing. Bob's link above will give you far better instructions on how to avoid malware than installing resource hogging software.

Viruses, Malware, and Ransomware are NOT the same things at all. There are no viruses in the wild that can affect macOS. Antivirus software on a mac is completely useless and will only serve to consume resources unnecessarily, slow the machine and make it less stable.

No. Read this tip: Effective defenses against malware and other threats

LEFBE wrote:

However, prevention is better than cure and there are free solutions, such as sophos home or other that avoid user errors.

In the case of antivirus software on Mac's, "prevention" is almost always much worse than the disease you're trying to protect against, which doesn't even exist in the first place.

Do you want your Mac to run like crap? Norton doesn't provide any service other than that.

No. It's completely worthless on a Mac, as is all antivirus software.

There are no viruses in the wild that can affect macOS.

miulli12 wrote:

…should I download Norton on it?

No.

LEFBE wrote:

However, prevention is better than cure and there are free solutions, such as sophos home or other that avoid user errors.

And, once again, prevention doesn't require additional software that causes more harm than it cures. Nothing in the article both Bob and I linked to requires any more technical acumen than installing Sophos. And, it has the added advantage of actually preventing things that Sophos can't. And, it's free.

LEFBE wrote:

My answer is not related to security and Apple products, but more as an indication. You like me do not know what the end user is doing with his Apple hardware, and it's better to prevent than correcting.

But, as noted, prevention doesn't require installing resource sucking software (that you have to pay for). In case you missed it the first time:

Effective defenses against malware and other threats

You're clearly right, however, not everyone is a computer scientist or an apple fan.

All information in this article are nice, and logical.

However, prevention is better than cure and there are free solutions, such as sophos home or other that avoid user errors.