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0 pointsfloatingatoll6y ago0 comments

Mac has intrusive anti-malware that is almost a carbon copy of Windows Defender, or used to be anyways (perhaps one or the other have changed in the past few years!). See also https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20407233

Linux is a wasteland of terrible security practices that sysadmins excuse as "acceptable" for their own workstations and servers because they think that locking down SSH is sufficient defense against e.g. malicious infections or "curl | bash".

I'm sorry that Defender has harmed you, but that's no excuse to recommend others disable automated Defender scans on some sort of schedule.

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jrochkind16y ago· 2 in thread

The link you link to is "Apple has pushed a silent Mac update to remove hidden Zoom web server."

It has little to do with the functions of Windows Defender. It was a special purpose function removing one very particular file from a specific location. It was not scanning your whole system, or downloads, for malware signatures.

When you say MacOS includes software that is "almost a carbon copy of Windows Defender," are you talking about something else? I am not aware of anything that comes with MacOS that has similar features to Windows Defender.

cwyers6y ago

macOS has had malware detection since Snow Leopard:

https://www.osnews.com/story/22059/snow-leopard-to-include-a...

floatingatollOP6y ago

You misunderstand how this system works. The Zoom removals were malware signature definition file update #45 and #46, iirc, since the feature went live years ago. I encourage further research.

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