Turns out that Macs aren’t as virus and hacker proof as originally perceived. Just check out a recent posting on MacRumors.com to read all the details.
In this blog post it appears that a new malware threat is appearing when users perform Google searches.
I’ve actually seen this malware pop up on a Mac recently, and the recommendation to mitigate this threat was to run as least privileged user (“of course”). Running as a standard user can blunt the attack and generally enhance security on any operating system. Interestingly, a post was made in the comments section below the article that got me thinking.
The commenter said, “nothing can defend against user stupidity.” If the organization allows users to run with administrator privileges on any operating system, is it really a surprise that bad things can and do happen? Is it realistic to think that users will do the right thing when faced with a security decision?
As IT professionals, it is easy to point the finger at the user and call them “stupid,” but that is because we have learned (in some cases, the hard way) to spot security threats that come from suspicious downloads and phishing scams. Further, users simply want to get their job done. If IT security is not part of their job description, it shouldn’t really come as any surprise that users ignore these security threats, which are obvious to IT professionals.
It could be argued that everyone has a responsibility when it comes to security, but that doesn’t mean that we should simply ignore recommendations to remove administrator privileges from users and call them stupid.
