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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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they still have to worry about the excess traffic generated.
my own company's mail server (which has an AV on it to check attachments) got the equivalent of a DDoS because of all the people who have us in their address books.
we ourselves did not get infected, but our mail server sure was (is still) sluggish.
Macs aren't "vaccinated" against Windows-based e-mail viruses or worms.
Saying Macs are "immune" in this case is about like saying my car is immune to Polio. It just doesn't apply in this case. Macs won't be "immune" to Mac-based viruses, when they come along.
Anyone dumb enough to launch an executable e-mail attachment without first virus-scanning it is dumb enough to do it on any platform they run. Bragging about Macs not being susceptible to this round of viruses is merely bragging about how few Macs there are, and how it isn't worth the time of the virus-writers to make Mac-based viruses. Whoopee.
I'm still saving up money for a G5, though it has nothing to do with how susceptible to viruses it is or isn't.
Wrong. A virus that exploits a cross-platform program such as Mozilla can infect multiple platforms.
A well-known class of Win-Mac viruses are the Microsoft Office macro viruses. MS Office is available for both Windows and Macintosh, and the versions for both platforms accept the same documents and viruses. With so few Mac-specific viruses available, these macro viruses were once the biggest threats to Mac users, but only those who had certain Microsoft programs. Now these viruses are forgotten as newer Office versions protect against macro viruses.
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There are two types of people: those who are in the world, and those who aren't.
> If you count worms that exploit only Linux, that have made it
> very far in the wild, you could probably count them on one hand.
OTOH, if you count worms that exploit unix-like systems in general,
you'll get a somewhat larger number. There have been quite a few
worms over the years that spread through unix-based software such
as sendmail. Naturally, most of them won't work on current versions.
Then again, that 50 number for Mac systems is low if you count
historical viruses that would no longer work on modern Mac systems.
Back in the day when all Macs still sported floppy drives and ran
a single-user out of the box, there were quite a large number of
Mac file viruses.
So if you only count malcode that's in the wild and will work
on current versions... there aren't many, except for Windows.
Cut that out, or I will ship you to Norilsk in a box.
Well yes it is possible to exploit a UNIX/Mac-BSD/linux OS (now referred to as UMBL) based system, it is much more difficult to do on a generic basis. 1) They all include firewalls as part of the OS. While often they can be disabled or not turned on by default, It was not till 2000 (win2k) that Windows started including a firewall as part of the OS. Even Linux, the new kid on the block has had SOME built in firewalling for about 10 years or more. 2) There is less scripting integration of applications in UMBL than in windows. If I am using mozilla mail or pine then I have to setup these 'execute this with' options. Also I am more likely to get prompted for this. With Windows virii you just click on the mail with the preview pane open and your hozed. MS does not make it super intuitive to figure out how to shut this off either. There is NO "Preferences" in Outlook, just "Options". Options are not really preferences. MS really needs to rethink what the F*** they are doing. I'm suprised noone has decided to ask the question is it just as easy to attack UMBL machines as it is windows? Or is it that people who run UMBL (atleast UBL not sure about M) more likely to turn off services and put up firewalls?
Yes every OS has holes, but with windows these holes appear as big as the grand canyon, while on other OS'es they appear like small little volcanos. The real issue is that MS needs to start shipping their product with ALL services off and a tight firewall and VBScript OFF and make the users turn these things on instead. Add Preferences into the system. They need to make it so that you can update a system and not have to reboot it cause you installed some new updates, unless its the actual OS kernel itself.
Also they need to lighten up on the licencing, and allow for people at home to install on 4-5 machines like Mac does. Mac costs 129 for OSX and a home user license (4-5 users) Windows costs 300 for 2k / XP for a 1 users license. Linux / BSD are less than 100 or even FREE for unlimited license. I think that part of the problem of people not updating their OS is that many people cannot afford 5x300 for WIndows and don't upgrade and update their OS cause A - bandwidth, B - fear that MS will come after them for license violation.
Don't defend a company that has 40 billion dollars in excess money that allows this kind of thing to happen, and then decides to outsource to india to make its profits even greater and its userbase larger. It just isn't right!
Only 'flamers' flame!
Does slashdot hate my posts?
I run a small on-site computer consulting company, and a local station (KOIN-6 in Portland) called to ask if they could come along on a service call to remove the worm, and film it (with the client's permission, of course.) So I found a client willing to do it, and met the news people there.
As part of the (short) interview, they asked how to avoid it, and I mentioned that Macintoshes and Linux machines were immune. That made it on the news. (Along with very little else of my interview.)
Another non-functioning site was "uncertainty.microsoft.com."
The purpose of that site was not known.
Would it not be possible to write a virus in AppleScript that took entries from the AddressBook and used them to send itself out to the rest of the world via Mail.app? Legitimate question. If the answer is "Yes" then why is Mac OS X more resistant to viruses than Windows/OutLook? Could it be that Mac OS X is only like 2% of the market and thus not a significant target?
Stuart Eichert
When I had my mom running Win98 I was fielding on the average 6-5 computer related questions a week and a system crash every couple of days, and she wasn't even really on the internet that much to catch viruses. All this stressful phone tech support stuff was really me generally annoyed and pissed at my sweet little old mother, I was beginning to dread any phone calls from her at all.
Getting her that 15" iMac for Xmas was the best thing for my nerves. She is set up as a regular user and there is a separate Admin account that she doesn't know the password for, so I KNOW the system will not get accidentally corrupted. That and any damage will be confined to her Home directory. Last time I updated the OS, the uptime was like 3+ months (last reboot before that was for another OS Update). She has not had a problem with figuring out the OS or using the applications that she didn't eventually figure out herself, thanks to the very intuitive interface. I don't have to worry about her contracting a weird/inconvenient Windows social disease/virus, when I put her on a cable modem later this month, I can count on the built in IPFW to keep some bad stuff from happening and thank god Sophos has a full time background virus scanner for OS X available now just in case.
My mom is actually doing REALLY well considering she just started using computers a couple of years ago (and late in life at that). But she is in the same position I'd guess 80-90% of Windows users are in: They know just enough to get some work done and more than enough to really get in some deep trouble and screw up their systems without being aware that they are doing it.
DaveC
There are no stupid questions...just stupid people.