14 DAY TRIAL // There has been an awful lot of security talk lately, concerning both the iPhone and the Mac. Coupled with Kasperski’s recent release of its Anti-Virus solution for Mac OS X, and now an updated ClamXav virus checker on the loose, we’d say there is little time left before Apple can no longer rub security in Microsoft’s face.
A free virus checker for users of an Apple Macintosh, ClamXav aims not to secure Macs, but to keep them from becoming carriers of a virus that might eventually end up on a Windows machine. There’s malware targeting Macs as well, and ClamXav will find those too, just as efficiently, according to Mark Allan, the developer of ClamXav.
“Back in the days before OS X, the number of viruses which attacked Macintosh users totaled somewhere between about 60 and 80,” Mark Allan (ClamXav.com) says. “Today, the number of viruses actively attacking OS X users is...NONE! However, this doesn't mean we should get complacent about checking incoming email attachments or web downloads, for two reasons. Firstly, there's no guarantee that we Mac users will continue to enjoy the status quo, but more importantly, the majority of the computing world use machines running MS Windows, for which an enormous quantity of viruses exist, so we must be vigilant in checking the files we pass on to our friends and colleagues etc,” the developer explains.
“I hope you like and use ClamXav a lot and that it helps keep you and your friends/colleagues virus-free,” Mark adds. On his website, he asks users to note that, “although I'm providing ClamXav for free, I am increasingly spending more and more time developing it and would really appreciate if you would consider making a donation please. All donations (no matter how small) are gratefully received and would be a huge incentive to help me work on future versions of ClamXav, but more importantly I rely on donations to pay for my bandwidth costs. Please consider it.” He also urges those who plan on using ClamXav to back up any important data before running the software, since ClamXav has the ability to move files on a computer.
Perhaps users should exercise even more caution in using the latest version of ClamXav, since it is a beta release. Speaking of which, version 2.0.4 Beta updates the scanning engine to ClamAV 0.95.3, and improves stability in ClamXav Sentry during scans and after waking from sleep. For a full list of enhancements and bug fixes, see the release notes here.