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'Opener' Malware Targets OS X
the_webmaestro writes "Macintouch.com is covering the "opener" malware, a new and potential vulnerability which affects Mac OS X. If true (it's not on HoaxBusters yet), this could become a Mac user's worst nightmare... Worse even than Microsoft Word macro viruses (heretofore the only real 'viruses' which threatened Mac users)! Normally, when ever I'd see virus alerts, I'd revel in the fact that as a Mac user, I was immune (except for the slow-down of the net, the loss in productivity of my colleagues, and the increase in SPAM--often coming from my friends and colleagues). [Sigh] Perhaps, my days of telling friends and family that there are no viruses for Macs may be coming to an end. There have been stories."
And the fact that you have been modded insightful and not funny, has subtle irony written all over :-).
It's funny you said that. 100% of the Apple owners I've ever met ARE snobs.
I still can't get the screen shots of Castle Wolfenstein for the Apple IIe out of my head.
>this is Slashdot, you should know tthe possibilities of bash scripting.
Really? I find a lot of the most vocal linux advocates to be using KDE or Gnome for everything and webmin for everything else. They scoff at my simple command line based cygwin setup because "its not linux."
Linux users are definitely geeky, but no offense they arent all command line hackers or even half-assed system admins. OSX users are even below this. I often port scan my subnet and find default services running with default settings on various distros. Its not just mandrake users either.
Thats the thing with popularity, there is a chance the fetished item will be co-opted by those much less interested than the original people and unlike the original "fans" they tend to be loud, obnoxious, insulting, etc. Its kinda like when the mainstream radio crowd "discovers" some indie band. Fanaticism runs deep and no one wants to talk about what equipment they are using this tour, the quality of songwriting, etc just "turn that shit up."
As long as the admin has the power to install bash scripts and the scripts have enough power to do damage then yes, its vulnerability open by default in MacOSX. Unless All= {all} All, means something different in Darwin then it does under regular Unix I assume its close enough as root. Just because its not technically root does not mean the default account has too many priveldges by default to make it less secure.
Windows is super insecure because users are admin by default. I see the same principle.
I do not understand why this topic is such flamebait. It was a simple question and an explanation. Put the fandom aside? Users should not be logged in as admin and should know the difference. Since most apple users are not unix whizzes they probably have no idea about this concept so Apple should be a little bit more carefull or at least try to educate people like Linux distro's do about being root.
Since almost all of you with one exception did not know this and it reconfirms my belief that users are ignorant and Apple should let them have the option for a regular users account upon default install. Distro's like SuSE even have a red background screen when you log in as root to remind them that its not a good idea unless you know what you are doing.
If the moderates want to mod this down as well go right ahead.
http://saveie6.com/