14 DAY TRIAL // Mac users be afraid, be very afraid? you are more at risk now than ever, you must start taking dramatic steps to protect yourselves from clear and imminent dangers that will without a doubt, some time in the future, appear in isolated cases and have some impact.
As usual, the sky is falling on the heads of poor Mac users, this time in the form of "chip-level threats." Since the last round of FUD did stir up too many waves, this time, the hardware is being attacked, because hey, it is the same as in all those Windows PCs and since they are vulnerable, then Mac must be too? it's the same hardware so they have to be vulnerable, right?
Wrong. McAfee, in a recent whitepaper, discussed the security challenges Apple faces now that chip-level threats are a potential problem that stems from the use of common processor architecture. Of course, there were no real life examples of such a threat, the last known serious attack of this type dating back to 1998, when the CIH/Chernobyl virus embedded itself into the flash-BIOS of infected systems. To make the warning even more hilarious, Macs don't even use the antiquated BIOS technology that Microsoft clings on to, and they never had, so even this example would not have affected Macs.
As usual after a round of FUD, we also learn the reason behind it? the cautionary white paper was published on the same day that McAfee launched a version of its security software for Intel-based systems.
Will these security companies ever get tired of crying "wolf", don't they realize that they have lost all credibility among Mac users with these constant warning about inexistent, potential, not going to happen any time soon, threats? Seems not.