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FBI Agent Talks Crime, Macs
hype7 writes "There's an article at SecurityFocus describing a visit an FBI agent to Washington University. His visit was ostensibly about computer security and the general public's complete lack of any idea on computer security whatsoever: 'I have spent a considerable amount in the computer underground and have seen many ways in which clever individuals trick unsuspecting users. I don't think most people have a clue just how bad things are.' His talk ranged from some of the pranks he's seen played on unsuspecting users, to Eastern European extortion of big banks." WeakGeek added, "FBI security guys are using Macs because, 'those machines can do just about anything: run software for Mac, Unix, or Windows, using either a GUI or the command line. And they're secure out of the box.' Another good quote: 'If you're a bad guy and you want to frustrate law enforcement, use a Mac.'"
They're only secure because, with such a minimal share, nobody cares about breaking into one.
Bullshit. Market share has nothing to do with it. There's at least as many Apache-based servers out there as IIS, but there are like 2 Apache worms.
And frankly, there are enough Mac-haters around that surely some would like to take Apple down a peg via a virus or some sort of exploit in OS X. How come it's never happened? How come in three years there hasn't been a single OS X virus discovered?
Apple have had several fixes just in the last few months fixing remote root access vulnerabilities.
Yeah, and the difference is, they were found and fixed without being maliciously exploited. Most of them were very unlikely to be exploited anyway, or were found in services that were off by default. The last one I heard about would allow a brand new machine to get owned if a rogue DHCP server happened to be sitting on the LAN. Yeah, that's likely to happen.
Contrast this with Windows, where shit is wide open by default, and the first anyone hears about a hole is usually when it has already brought the internet to a crawl. Not that patches for exploits do any good when people don't apply them-- I just took a look in my firewall logs, and I'm still getting Nimda and Code Red infection attempts.
is that they are technologically impaired halfwits. If they would accually take the time to hire *real* computer experts, maybe they would have a little bit more success in stopping something.
In the past, I could send them detailed logs, including TCP dumps, of people controlling DDOS networks, threatening people, bragging about committing DDOS. And nothing would happen. More recently, a friend of mine had serious threats to her and her child from a stalker - who authorities proceeded to track to Atlanta. But they seemed to miss the fact that he was repeatedly coming from a dialup IP address in Toronto.
Law enforcement on the internet needs to be put into the hands of a capable multinational group with laws that are defined to cross boarders. Until then, DDOS kiddies will still be running around quite loudly proclaiming their existance.
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Linux is like a friend's old TR7. He spent more time under the hood trying to keep it running than he did actually driving it. Mac OS X is for those who want to get to a destination, in speed and with style; instead of piddling around tinkering with the machine.
That is the way I feel too.
I've used Linux for a longer time than most of the slashkids in here have known how to read. Like a lot of Linux users, I went through the silly zealot phase, but luckily, matured enough to make my way out of those woods.
NeXTSTEP and then OS X, for me, was Unix without the hassle of Linux. Way too often on Linux, now and then, I spend more time dicking around with the machine- screwing around with libraries, configurations, all sorts of stuff- than I did doing "real work." That was all fine and dandy when I had an abundance of free-time, prime to be wasted. Not to say that learning- especially enjoyable learning- is a waste of time, but for me, configuring, installing, and doing all sorts of other maintenence on my Linux system is about as much fun as maintaining Windows. When I want to work I want it to work. Sometimes, I may go back on the random weekend to do that 'under the hood' stuff, but I don't want to *have to* spend time under the hood just to keep it running.
With OS X, I had the best of both worlds. I had oodles of stuff to tinker with, to my heart's content- and a lot of it is totally new to an old DOS and Linux user, a brave new world full of all sorts of fun stuff. I can go in and spend time under the hood as much as I like. But, when I haven't the time or the desire to do so, it just works.
For those of you with so much free time as "playing around" with Linux constitutes most of what you consider as using your computer- more power to you. Learning is fun and never a waste of time. But for those of us who want the perks provided by Linux or another Unix-like OS but with a number of positive advantages that impact silly things like "productivity", we have OS X.
Working toward a usable PDA environment in the spirit of Newton OS: Dynapad
Updating libraries, fixing missing includes, or paths, is not all that bad. You learn in the process what role libraries and includes and paths play in an environment where software development is encouraged, and some tinkering to compile an application might be required.
The thing I did not like was how hard small things were. Changing the font in xterm. Plugging in an external display. Getting the optimal resolution/refresh rate/color scheme. Laying out your desktop and having the OS remember the layout.
Those things are more annoying than they should be but with OSX, it takes a second to change all of the above, and more.
There is value in knowing how a system operates underneath, but wasting endless hours reading xterm man pages and entering font strings into a config only for them to make no difference is a big waste of time.
OSX still lets you play with the internals but also eliminates the useless functionalities.