An opinion that persists to this day, except probably among the some 700,000 Flashback victims. Up to that time, there was a consensus that an antivirus application for a Mac was merely ballast. The Flashback attack of 2012 caught many users flat-footed, and over 700,000 Macs were infected in a flash. USB sticks, CDs or DVDs, however, are not inspected. Xprotect, for example, checks the mail and browser downloads. To be sure, since OS X 10.7 or 10.8 there are some good internal security systems such as Gatekeeper, Sandbox and Xprotect. Everyone says: Mac OS X can protect itself
