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Mac's Immunity To Recent Virus Attacks
bluepinstripe writes "
An article over at MacCentral references two articles about the Mac's immunity to the recent virus attacks." This is nothing new, but worthy of note, from time to time, such as now.
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To most of us, it is common sense that Windows-based viruses and worms won't affect Macintoshes, but there are end users out there who think that viruses affect all platforms.
Unfortunately, none of those naive users browse this site.
More than enough BS
So join the crusade. Give your mom a mac!
A Multiplayer Strategy Game for Mac OS X, Windows, and Linux
Agreed. It just seems like people brag about something that is painfully obvious (Macs don't get affected by Outlook viruses; people who are vaccinated against polio don't get polio)
Again, agreed.
And this leads to another point. Why do we call them "Windows" viruses. It isn't a function of Windows, per se, that allows this to happen. It's a function of Outlook and OE that causes the problem. If mail.App ran binary attachments without a scan, Macs would be just as vulnerable as Windows machines.
We should start calling them Outlook viruses. Put the blame where it belongs, on the bad email applications.
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I don't get all these nasty comments about Macs. I don't actually own one, been a Linux user since 1994 and before that I was a SUNOS guy. Never really liked Macs but I could see that people found them easy to use so that was fine. OSX is by far the best of both worlds, my next laptop is almost certainly going to be a powerbook, doesn't mean I won't continue to like Linux, its all UNIX, its all good.
The one thing I find odd is the lie that is simplicity. Macs are a doddle to use and yet they are clearly also nice secure systems. Windows is less easy to use and yet easier to write viruses and trojans for. Chewbacca defense? It does not make sense! If Macs were as common as PCs they still wouldn't suffer the same level of viruses and worms as Windows does. Same is true for Linux. Besides which, what if we had 25% Windows, 25% Linux, 25% Macs and 25% others. I bet Windows would still have by far the greatest number of viruses etc.
Cool off guys. Macs are good. Its all UNIX and that is good. A little bit more of this and Windows will be the minority just as it should be.
"I have the attention span of a strobe lit goldfish, please get to the point quickly!"
Mac's seem to be immune from viruses not because Mac's are totally secure, it's due to the fact that the clowns that write viruses HATE Microsoft and want MS to look bad. Every OS has holes of some sort. No software is perfect.
"Patriotism is supporting your country all the time, and your government when it deserves it." Mark Twain.
Anti-virus software maker Sophos PLC's Graham Cluley told the Sun's Zeiler that Macs have "no more inherent security" than their PC counterparts, it's just that they've failed "to capture interest" among the creators of these viruses.
The Unix/OSS security model in OSX (and lack of Outlook type automatic unsecure scripting) is not the only protection. This exists in Linux and BSD et al also. The use of x86 machine code in buffer overflow attacks will not work on PPC or Sparc machines.
Or protect you from stuff on the web (popups, pop-unders, RPC worms) People want convenience, and that runs against security.
Ok, no more email attachments, of any kind. Also, since your web browser can cause popups, no more web browsing. And, since your unpatched Windows computer will let RPC calls on it, no more PC for you.
Ladies and gentlemen: computers are complex machines. Much more so than your car, for example. However, you need some form of training to operate a car. Why do people think they can just go to a store, buy a box with some electronics in it, and have everything they want and nothing that they don't want? It's a tool. Learn to use it properly. If you hit your thumb with a hammer, you don't blame Stanley. </rant>
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thus its clear MS is cavelier.
On the other hand keeping unix secure is truly hard work. there are lots of dark alleys few sys admins really know about and the development is distributed so one has to trust an awful ot of people.
I fear keeping my linux systems patch and basically just rely on aa fire wall.
with macs I know that 1) a single entitiy has considered the system as whole and tries to keep everyone having the same config (redhat susue, united linux encourage highly modified configurations). and 2) because of this and their large commercial market share they have an excellent pathc distribution system that does not seem to break your computer.
thus macs I think actually have reasons they are more secure. and I believe apple is managing security better than MS.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
Am i the only one that thinks this article should be on the front page?
By all means get your Mom a Mac but don't let Mac OS 9 and previous lull you into a false sense of security. The notion that Macs are a nice safe place to avoid virii and worms is obsolete. With Mac OS X Mac's are now much more vulnerable and a highly inviting target:
(1) They have excellent remote user capabilities. This not only aids in compromising the system but it's Unix nature makes it an excellent place to run various hacking tools from. An excellent proxy.
(2) They have very poor administration. Few Mac users, hell few Linux box owners for that matter, are capable administrators. There machines are as vulnerable their last Software Update as last weeks update shows: "Today, Apple released Security Update 2003-08-14, which 'addresses a potential vulnerability in the fb_realpath() function which could allow a local or remote user to gain unauthorized root privileges to a system.'"
These two facts will draw much more attention to Macs by virus and worm authors.
Macs derive some benefit from their approach to "administrator rights". I've got them, but to actually do anything, I need to type a password.
On Windows (at least W2K) if you need administrator privileges, then they're on all the time. Accidentally run a virus while in administrator mode, and it gets to use those administrator privileges, too.
You can write such Applescript but you also would have to click yes to a dozen of messages like:
:-)
Do you want to open this?
Shall I send this mail to these 300 addresses
Where do you want to unzip this executable
Shall I start it?
Shall I make a copy and send to all entries in your address book?
Then yes, if you are so dumb as to answer "Yes" to all those questions everytime an app gets fired by the Applescript and opens windows on your face then yes, it would be possible.
On Windows the OS answers "YEEEEEEESSSSSS please do" without you ever noticing what is going on.
That's why the worm/virii spread so easily on WIndows: it is dumb.
Also, every Windows app run as 'system' that is even IM or IE is like GOD on Windows.
Mac applications do not have those rights and more, root user is disabled by default and the average user does not even have the tools to activate it or know how to.
A virus on Mac would need the active collaboration of the user to spread. On Windows it has the granted collaboration of Windows. Like giving the keys of you mansion to the thieves themselves while you are on vacation.
Keep trusting Windows, it is so clever
And oh yes: it is just visibility LOL
No, IDC's numbers actually are not based on sales. I used to work for Red Hat and went to a couple of the presentations that IDC gave to senior management, where they talked about the difficulty of measuring usage of a free OS. They described their methodology, which consisted of polling and sampling from multiple sources.
It's not perfect, but I'd bet that their numbers are within 20% of the actual usage.
"It is our blasphemy which has made us great, and will sustain us, and which the gods secretly admire in us." - Zelazny
A "glorified window manager"? Is that why OS X has three different APIs that its applications are written for? Guess what, fucknut, you can delete everything "BSD" about Mac OS X and it'll continue to boot without any problem whatsoever. But why is that? The kernel's not BSD--not by a longshot. It's Mach. The window server? It's Quartz. The "command line environment"? Completely unnecessary for 99% of the apps that OS X runs. Yeah, Adobe Photoshop doesn't give a shit if you have ncurses installed. And your Mp3 player? Fuck GTK, QT, and Tk. It'll be written in Carbon or Cocoa.
Yeah, that "window server" does quite a bit, doesn't it?
Doesn't it make you feel good to know that our freedoms are protected by politicans, lawyers and journalists.
Indeed.
It has nothing to do with visibility. There are still millions of Macs running in the world and they would contribute to spreading virii perfectly as well as Linux platforms: again millions.
Fatc is not only it is more difficult to write those virii, they most probably will not spread: there is no avalanche effect as with Windows system. Hence NOT WORTH THE EFFORT.
And this means as well: NOT EASY. It is not a virus if it cannot spread exponentially. The easyness does not come from the fact that you can write an Applescript to reproduce what a WIndows virus does into a SINGLE Wintel PC, the difficult part is to have it SPREAD. Hence I have to disagree with you in that. It is not easy to write a virus for Unix/OS X/Linux/. If it does not spread easily it is not a virus.
I didn't see anyone pointing out that Apple has an excellent automated software update mechanism in place, which by default looks weeky for updates and asks if users want them. If you hit return rather than cancel, you get your update. No sysadmin assistance is required, but that factor in Mac adoption is another story. Some users will reject an update because they don't want to take the chance that it requires a reboot (most security patches do not, but other updates often do). But at least during virus scares, the updates are likely to be accepted. If Macs were more common, it seems like the necessary updates would be in place more universally than they are among Windows users.
Can anyone comment on how effective the comparable process is for PC, Linux, Unix, and whether there is a differential between these and the Mac update process?
ThosEM