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MacHome AV for iPad

ferrygod

I cannot find any mention that the free Sophus Mac Home AV is required for iPad, does this AV apply across the whole Mac range including iPad?

Thanks.

:1002203


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    Hello Richard,

    iOS is quite different from MacOS thus a specific product is needed (and if there were just one brand for the different platforms it'd definitely not contain Mac). If your question is about the requirement for such a product - well, although malware for mobile platforms is still rare it already exists (see for example here) and I guess that we'll see (more) security products for mobile platforms in the near future. In the case of iOS you very likely won't find it anywhere except the AppStore though.

    Christian

    :1002209
  • 0

    Thanks Christian and sorry for the confusion, what I actually meant was should I download the MacHome AV onto my iPad as a precaution against the possibility of trojan attacks? I wasn't sure if the AV applied to iPad or only Mac books.

    :1002215
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    As Christian said, iOS running on the iPad (and the iPhone and iPod Touch) is a completely different environment than OS X running on a Mac computer (MacBook, Mac Pro, iMac, Mac Mini) -- different hardware, different software, different environment.

    Not only will Mac OS X software not run on an iPad, but there is no way to download and install software to the iPad that is not in the App Store (aside from jailbroken iPads, but that is a different discussion).

    MacHome AV will also not run on MS Windows or Linux operating systems.

    It does, however, run on older PowerPC-based Macs running OS X 10.4.

    Since a factory-standard iPad cannot install software other than through the App Store, creating and deploying Trojan software for the iPad (or any iOS device) is much trickier than for an open platform like OS X -- it can be done, but Apple is able to retroactively pull any Trojan software it discovers on the App Store; and an iPad is not usually an always-on-and-connected device, so the benefit to a malware author is less.

    If you're looking to detect OS X and Windows trojans on an iPad device, there is currently no product that I am aware of that does this.

    :1002223
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    Thanks Andrew and Christian, all is now clear!

    :1002227
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    Thanks also from me for the emailed info. about my iPad.

    :1013963