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"Experts" Say Macs Are Not Safer Than PCs
MoneyT writes "As reported at vnunet, experts are claiming that Macs are no safer than PCs in terms of protection from a virus. Seems more to me like they're just saying that we Mac users aren't invulnerable, but until I see things like nimda taking out my Mac, I'll stick with the iBook." The article doesn't mention that the "7,000 macro viruses" attack Microsoft products (leaving uses of a Mac only as a web server completely protected from them), nor does it quote any statistics about how many Mac vs. Windows viruses exist, and it doesn't address the real-
world fact that Macs are hit with viruses far less often than Windows machines.
Just Symantec trying to boost sales of their Macintosh product. I use a Mac without MSOffice, and I almost never use IE (I use OmniWeb, Chimera, or full Mozilla instead), and only use OS X (don't use Virtual PC). None of the viruses they're talking about (except maybe Sub7, though all but one of the SubSeven viruses listed in Symantec's only encyclopedia are said to affect .exe files - not a Mac problem). Sure, there are probably a few Unix vulnerability that could hurt me, but compared to the 1 copy I get of Klez.H per day, I feel much safer on my Mac.
according to experts who have just shattered a long standing myth.
This is total biased crap. I don't mean to troll, but think about the statement. Who where the experts? A company who sells virus software, who wants to break into the mac market. What was their evidence? "Because we said so".
Unless I get cold hard facts, I refuse to beleive that apple has code that is so flawed it would be a threat to national security. The same things about MacOS that makes it more stable are the things that make it more secure, namely properly written code, and quality assurance testing before release. None of this security by obscurity that you see way too often.
Sigs are out of style, so I'm not going to use one...oh wait..
It is not OS/X, it is OS X.
The story author, James Middleton, is a known troll and MS banner-waver, check out http://www.vnunet.com/News/1128907
Either that, or he is very susceptible to marketing hype from corporate interests, and taking it as news.
"I would say that 99 per cent of what my father has written about his own life is false." - L. Ron Hubbard Jr.
Once upon a time, I read some article saying that risk assessment was accomplished by examining the possible threats, the consequences of each threat and the likelihood of that threat actually happening. All of the threats discussed in the article are real, but the actual risk at this time is quite small. You also have to look at the malware tools available for Windows and Microsoft products that can automate virus creation, etc. giving the clueless the tools to cause a little havock. To my knowledge, there isn't anything analogous for the Macintosh, either OS 9 or OS X. Yes, the virus writers will go for the platform where they can do the most damage. But they'll also go for the platform that is easiest to write viruses for -- Windows!
If Apple had say 45% OS market share, I'm sure there would be many more Mac viruses rampaging across the net.
I hear that argument from Windows users all the time and I'm sure there's some truth to it. I mean it's obvious. But there's another part to the story. The part where Microsoft makes many of it's software products in an extremely vulnerable way in order to "give customers what they want."
Case in point. Why are Word, Outlook, Excel, PowerPoint, Access, etc all able to open programmable documents which could contain potentially malicious code? In plain english, the way they've chosen to impliment scripting and macros makes them dead-on guilty of making extremely vulnerable products.
Do you remember back in the days before such things existed? Before the concept of the "macro virus"? How many virii were there back then? How vulnerable did you feel? What percentage of Windows users even had virus protection? And most importantly, don't you think it's strange that everyone just accepts this? All for the sake of the 0.02% of macro-writers out there.
So yes, there would be more Mac virii if there were more Macs, I buy that. But there would be less Windows virii if MS didn't knowingly and repeatedly sell fundamentally insecure software products.
So please don't lull yourself to sleep with the old "there are so many Windows virii because there are so many Windows boxes out there." Rather, wake up and realize that Microsoft has decidedly turned away from security in favor of whiz-bang features that look good printed on the software box.
And please pardon the shrill, crazed tone of the above. I've been holding that one in for a while I guess.
You like your Macintosh better than me, don't you Dave? Dave? Can you hear me Dave?
although mac does contain a very small market share, what hasn't been touched on here is the code. The code from apple or linux is far cleaner than anything m$ has ever written, or for that matter will ever write, thus avoiding a lot of problems with infections and buffer overflows.
.net service and "pirate" app checker, leaving huge holes in your OS no matter what type of firewall is installed on your computer.
Also m$ does this really cool thing to your security in windoze xp, it bypasses it all for its
The simple fact is, cleaner code is far less buggier and less likely for infection.
Now these people state that viruses can affect any OS, this is true, but remember that 99% of all viruses are written for the m$ OS simply because the system is so easy to hack.
With Mac entering the GPL world, they will have an advantage along with linux or any other *nix os, because if a fatal flaw is found on the code, you don't have just 3 guys in a backroom working on the problem like m$ does, but rather, you have a whole community that will come to its savior to fix the problem, giving virus writers a rather difficult time in creating malicious code and having it work longer than a week.
The Mac, either Classic OS9 or OSX is generically not safer than Windows. The fact that Microsoft products are virus traps is not only because they are written without any real security in mind. It is also because the platform is so widley used. I can't substantiate this of course, but the sheer volume of Windows, IE, MSSQL and Outlook Virii does point to the fact that *a lot* of people are almost constantly on the lookout for ways to crack the system.
The Classic Mac OS had the one built-in but not for that purpose security measure in that it didn't have a commandline. This prevented anyone from logging in via SSH or whatever and rooting the system. The only widespread server on the Classic OS was Webstar and by default it didn't have any way of getting in via a CGI or buffer overflow unless you installed plug-ins, and even then you could crack the serve but had no way of doing anything else on the computer.
Mac OSX has had the occaisional security hole, the last one I remember (Apart from an IE hole but we won't talk about that) was the HFS case hole. Apple has simply been wise and turned off most of the daemons that are notoriously prone to sniffing etc by default such as telnetd, ftpd etc. If you turn these on, you stand a good chance of getting hacked.
Apple also has a built in Scripting System on both the Classic and OSX systems: AppleScript. The only reason that there have not been more Virii coming in on this channel is because there is no automatic way to execute one of these as there is on windows. You could however easily use social engineering (i.e. trick someone into downloading a bad Applescript application) and wreak havoc on that persons machine.
Anyone who has used Macs in the early '90s will remember many Virii such as mdbf or the CD autoplay worm, some of which were even spread on MacWorld CD's. Apple's loss of marketshare in the mid '90s coincided with less virii being written for the Mac. You work that out.
With the rising marketshare of the *new* Apple under Jobs and Tevanian with the new OS I am willing to bet that the attempts to crack the system will incease.
How Apple will eact to this will determine Apple reputation in this espect. Up until now Apple has been very good and fairly candid at reacting to and releasing patches and hasn't gone on any whining campaigns as MS has done in order to try to draw attention away from buggy products.
So, the article is not entirely wrong but still misses the true issue.
I take issue with the statement that most mac users are generally less computer literate than windows uers. It is my experience that most mac users are at least slightly more IT literate than your average Windows PC owner.
Don't forget we're talking about a 90-95% market-share here for Windows, and it's my experience as an ISP support engineer that has drawn me to this conclusion.
I supported macs and pcs side by side, and without exception the complete no-hopers were PC users.
Most mac users tend to have macs for work, and make it their business to know at least the basic System maintenance tasks to ensure their livelihood.
The fact that the average (traditional) mac user's fascination with their computer's inner workings stops there is not an indication of ignorance, more that the computer itself is not the toy, it's the creative tools that run on it.