Security

Can malware spread from windows to mac on a macbook since the same hardware is used? Does malware only affect the os which may affect harsware or can malware affect hardware directly?

Malware is not a physical thing.  Hardware is.  However, a hard drive is hardware, but it holds software.  Software is code so the code could be malware.  Taking a thumb drive that contains infected programs and plugging it in to more than one computer can transfer the malware to each of the computers that it is plugged into.

 

Malware is a computer program… or snippet of code.  It can only run in an environment that understands the code.

 

A weird analogy:  Let's say that you speak english, and only english.  You don't speak german.  Now, someone yells insults at you in german.  You don't know what they are saying so you don't know you are being insulted.  The insults are meaningless.  So on your computer, the malware code is a set of commands.  If the malware is designed to be understood by IOS… it is unlikely that Windows will understand the commands.

 

So… in answer to your question… most malware is designed for a specific operating system and therefore cannot run on a different operating system.  However, some malware is designed to run on an "add on language".  For example, if you have Java… Java malware will run regardless of the underlying operating system.  And… they are still rare, but there are getting to be more and more cross platform malware.  The malware determines what Operating System you have, an then runs the appropriate code.