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BBC Writer Responds To Mac Security Critiques
minimunchkin writes "BBC Correspondent Bill Thompson responds to the flaming he received for an article on the vulnerabilities in Mac security. He knows that there are no Mac OS X viruses in the wild, and he doesn't believe there ever will be." From the article: "However the wider point, that there are exploitable vulnerabilities and sometimes Apple puts them there, remains. Even if I'm careful to apply updates when they are made available, some people might not and their systems could be compromised. And there is always a gap between the discovery of an issue and an available fix, a gap which could be exploited. "
Add to that the following statement (my own): "Being a Microsoft proponent in an argument about operating systems is like being a white male in a discussion on discrimination."
- Greg
Start a happiness pandemic
Mac users demonstrate an indefensible smugness when it comes to the dangers of having their systems compromised by malicious software and opened up to exploitation by others. It's time they started behaving a bit more responsibly.
Dear Mr. Thompson:
When you accuse several million people of demonstrating "indefensible smugness" based solely on the type of computer they're sitting in front of, you must certainly expect something of a backlash from those of us who do, in fact, take security seriously. When you tell the likes of systems administrators and security experts they should behave "a bit more responsibly", they're rightly going to tell you to go piss up a rope.
On the Internet, we refer to people who make statements such as the one quoted above as "trolls". Engaging in this type of behavior is generally frowned upon. For example, if I were to say "this is the sort of idioctic drivel the world has come to expect from those effete Brits," I, too would be guilty of trolling and would receive untold amounts of well-deserved invective from the readers of this post.
Fortunately for me, I know better than to make such outrageous statements.
Obliteracy: Words with explosions
Emacs vs Vi
It doesn't matter whether how secure the OS is, all that matters is how secure your data is. You could have an OS with more holes than a sieve, but if for one reason or another your data is less likely to be compromised then that is all that matters. Apple has unfound theoretical vulnerablities. So what, it doesn't matter. All that matters is that my word documents stay mine.
We forgive you on one condition: you admit publicly that emacs is the one true editor. Then you won't have to worry about anyone flaming you ever again.
So you're discriminating against white males by not allowing them to discuss discrimination because they're not discriminated against? But then, because you've discriminate against them, they can discuss it, but then you haven't discriminated against them because you've....
But spyware and keyloggers are written for Mac OS as for other Unixes, and could be installed on a compromised system by a worm or even by a Trojan that is installed with user permission.
Gee, who would think? This statement gives the impression that Unix is especially vulnerable to this issue and that there is some solution to this problem. The fact that Unix's user segregation is one of the cleanest and most secure out there obviously doesn't factor into his security assessment and what I really wonder is what his suggestion for changing this "vulnerability" is. If he's looking for a technical one, I think he'll be looking for a while, since there is none. The human is always a security risk on the system. The question is only to what degree. Technology can help minimize the damage but in the end, it's always the same problem.
Please don't misuse the word "troll". Like it or not, he is pointing out a very serious issue that affects all operating systems, be it Windows, Mac OS X, OpenBSD, UnixWare, OS/2, MS-DOS, VMS, or basically any other operating system.
Frequent updates are necessary, especially when it comes to networked systems. Concurrently, many users (even experienced administrators) fail to keep their systems patched and up to date, be it for a lack of time or due to financial constraints.
Remember, Mac OS X is often targetted towards more inexperienced users, or those who just want a system that works. For the most part, that is true of Mac OS X. It does often just work. But likewise, it is necessary to keep it updated.
Now, he isn't a "troll" for pointing out that very real, very serious fact. Sure, it might have angered some people, but that's not his fault in any way.
If your doctor were to diagnose you with AIDS, and you did indeed have the syndrome, he would not be a "troll", regardless of how much you were angered by his diagnosis. In much the same way, this BBC author is not a "troll".
Cyric Zndovzny at your service.
Just because a legitimate, completely truthful opinion angers some, it does not make the opinion "flamebait".
Words like "flamebait" and "troll" are most often used seriously by those who are trying to incite trouble amongst people who are pointing out real, solid facts.
We see this today in the media, where various governments label their opponents as "terrorists". Of course, in many cases those governments are partking in the very same actions that may be construed as "terrorism".
These sorts of labels are useless just because they are misapplied so often, by so many different people and groups.
Cyric Zndovzny at your service.
is that nothing is perfect. We flawed humans created flawed machines and flawed software. No matter what OS you run there will always be flaws that someone could exploit. I use Macs but I certainly don't count on OS X being secure enough for me to connect to the internet without using a correctly configured firewall.
If "disco" means "I learn" in Latin, does "discothèque" mean "I learn technology"?
It doesn't matter whether I use a condom or not, all that matters is that I don't get an STD or impregnate anyone. You could have a penis with less protection than a sheet of paper around a bomb, but if for one reason or another your body is less likely to get syphillis, then that is all that matters. Humans have unfound theoretical vulnerabilities. So what, it doens't matter. All that matters is that my penis doesn't rot off.
Looking at most of the vulnerability patches over the past year or two, the ones I have seen appear to be cross platform. Oddly enough I have yet to see a vulnerability in a major Apple implemented library. Things like the JPEG exploit, the PHP XSS attack exploit are all cross platform issues that affect Mac OS, Windows, Linux, Unix etc.
When I hear of a major Apple specific flaw, like a flaw in an iLife app perhaps, then I will be worried. Until then I need to get back to patching my Windows system for its flaws in IE, WMF, and the list goes on and on and on... not to bash MS or nothing, but its a fuckin pain that the OS size is mainly patches sucking room on my hard drive...
It's not appropriate to generalize about UNIX these days, considering how many different UNIX-style systems there are.
Linux might be vulnerable in one case, while Mac OS X, UnixWare, FreeBSD, Solaris, AiX and other such systems are perfectly safe. Likewise, Solaris might be affected, while the other systems are not. And so on, and so forth.
Now, various UNIX-like systems have run into problems in the past with regards to security. Thanks to the relative degree of fragmentation, such incidents are usually isolated to a particular brand or product, and thus do not appear overly severe. But they still do exist, and we shouldn't forget that.
As users of UNIX-like systems, the best thing we can do for ourselves is always remember that our systems are vulnerable, even if they are often of a higher quality than other systems.
Cyric Zndovzny at your service.
>>doesn't believe there ever will be.
Let's not be too naive and write statements like there will never be a worm for Macs. If someone wanted to they could write a worm to infect them. Saying I don't believe anyone will write one is sticking your head in the sand. You have to assume there will be one and then start to protect yourself, not the opposite.
Quality Hosting e3 Servers
Dear M. Thompson:
No Shit, Mr. Holmes(ne: Thompson). Welcome to the real world, where there are unscrupulous characters just waiting for you to wander past that allegorical dark alley, and get gobsmacked for doing something unconditionally stupid.
Sometimes people just have to learn and adapt to change, it is one of the requirements of being a living thing.
Firstly, saying that vunerabilities exist is akin to saying that there are bugs in someone's software. You're just about guaranteed to be right.
Smugness, I'm not sure about (I'm a linuxite). Certainly there is something that most Windows users don't experience, and that is actual *enjoyment* from their OS. Microsoft has never tried especially hard to make their OS enjoyable, only usable.
Would things be different if OS X were the predominant OS? Without doubt. However, OS X, both the kernel (Darwin), and user interface, have been precisely engineered. Windows, one might argue, more evolved. They claim complete rewrites of the OS occured, but I'm willing to bet tons of code was copied-and-pasted in the process.
This does not guarantee it is fool-proof. Only time can tell that. But I would be willing to hedge a bet that less exploits exist for OS X than for Windows.
Invariably the security of your data is dependent on the security of your OS. If you have some wonderfully encrypted data files you have to interact with them via the OS. So somebody exploits a vulnerability, you end up with a key logger on your machine, and now your intricate password to protect your encrypted files is forfeit.
As for the article's conclusion that viruses are unlikely, I think he's wrong. What makes Unix safer from viruses, etc, is the isolation between user level activity and administrator activity. Thus while one account may be compromised a whole system isn't. So this makes it harder for viruses, but not impossible by any stretch.
For example, a virus can be destructive without becoming root. It can, as you allude to, attack only your data, instead of a whole system's data, but in the end, it's still your data getting corrupted. Furthermore, most of the exploits I've seen of Linux systems involve taking a non-root exploit and then using another vulnerability to make it a root exploit.
Something else to consider on OSX is the sudo. As I understand it, any user on an OSX system can use sudo. So, if an exploit can gain user level privleges, it can then use social engineering, keylogging, etc, to gain the users password and then, in effect, gain root priveleges through sudo.
What protects OSX for now is that it has a smaller share of the market so there are less people trying to exploit it. Eventually if OSX gains market share, then there will be far more incentive to write malware for it. Certainly it will take greater skill to exploit OSX and it will be easier to defend against those exploits, but it only takes one clever hacker to completely ruin your day.
This sig has been temporarily disconnected or is no longer in service
And you're just an idiot who thinks you're right because you're a beek posting on slashdot......
Zealots....*sigh*
Also of note is that Apple, like Microsoft, reserves the right to refrain from public distribution of information on vulnerabilities and known exploits. Both companies pursue that old-fashioned model of closing their codebases and asking developers to sign NDA's.
If there is no opening for the wider developer community to find and report vulnerabilities then how can a user of either platform feel confident in their machine's relative security? Are we supposed to trust these companies to keep us informed, companies whose very share prices rise and fall with criticism (particularly on the level of security)?
Personally, this is reason enough to shy away from either platform - and perhaps explains why both platforms are very rarely found in mission critical applications.
I have been connecting my iBook on OS X 10.3.9, unpatched since the upgrade was released in April 2005, to the internet with my admin password set to password. Why? Not because I'm smug, but because I want to live dangerously, just not that dangerously.
I'm like a small wimpy guy who likes to pick fights with people but only when his big mate(s) are around.
Seriously, the argument that there are exploits is an important one to keep in mind. Nobody questions that Firefox is so far ahead of IE on security that the difference can be measured in red-shift. However, anybody who then concludes that Firefox users can afford to be complacent is completely outside the Universe entirely. The same is true of OS vulnerabilities. If a vulnerability is detected, it needs fixing. Ideally, you write the software correctly in the first place so that there are extremely few vulnerabilities that ever need to be fixed, but that doesn't generally happen.
Is Bill Thompson a troll? To a degree. He has absolutely zero diplomatic touch, which is presumably why the BBC put him on the technology desk and not in foreign affairs. If you're in a war-zone, tact is an important skill to have.
The part that concerns me most, which I'm not seeing enough commentary on, is the extremely serious allegation that Apple have deliberately installed backdoors into their systems. If this allegation has any foundation in fact, Apple should face intense questioning on their conduct. Cisco got burned when the backdoors they installed were discovered and although you can argue that an Apple is not quite as critical a part of the infrastructure, backdoors are certainly not ethical and possibly not legal.
I've heard people arguing that you can't prove a program bug-free (actually, the Halting Problem only proves you can't do so for the general case, it says nothing about specific cases), but the more I hear of people abusing trust (eg: Sony), wilfully releasing defective software with known and documented bugs on the grounds people will update eventually anyway (Microsoft) and incorporating deliberate backdoors (Cisco), the more I am convinced that there should be consumer protection legislation that forces software companies to maintain certain standards. These sorts of wilfull, knowledgable, abuse of consumers is simply not acceptable.
And, yes, I don't care if it takes a BBC hack journalist to point this out.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
The Slashdot story is misleading by saying "[Bill Thompson] knows that there are no Mac OS X viruses in the wild, and he doesn't believe there ever will be.". Actually Bill Thompson thinks it is possible but unlikely, quoting TFA: "I don't believe that Mac viruses already exist, and I think it's very unlikely that they ever will."
There is a big difference between saying "I don't believe in <foobar>" and "<foobar> is very unlikely". Such subtle differences in phrasing totally explain why some people agree with Bill and some others disagree.
It seems easy enough to piss of Apple/MAC fans: just say something slightly negative, no matter how grounded in fact, about Apple or Mac.
This guy did that, so he got flamed.
It reminds me a bit of the Linux zealots.
I personally didn't know much about the Mac crowd until recently -- but they are very touchy. Perhaps that is why the GNAA makes so much fun of them.
http://www.thebricktestament.com/the_law/when_to_
The part that concerns me most, which I'm not seeing enough commentary on, is the extremely serious allegation that Apple have deliberately installed backdoors into their systems.
And from the article:
Sometimes Apple make things worse. For example, widgets, small programs that can do things like search online dictionaries or let you listen to streamed BBC programs, can be installed without your permission when you visit a website using the Safari browser, just like Windows does with ActiveX controls.
Bill Thompson does NOT claim Apple purposefully installed backdoors. He claims that Apple has installed features which historically have had security problems.
I personally find Thompson's comment a bit worthless (browsers have historically had security flaws and caused vulnerabilities, why not ship without a browser?). But to be fair, he is NOT claiming Apple is doing anything malicious.
"Being a Microsoft proponent in an argument about operating systems is like being a white male in a discussion on discrimination." gee... I wonder what OS you use... The problem is that there would be at least some sympathy for the white male in a situation like that... but none for the "Microsoft proponent." The white male can't help what he is... though, I guess... the Microsoft proponent can't help what he is either (i.e. not capable of informed and intelligent choice, you know... thick, dim witted... do I have to spell it out for you? He's STUPID.)
The term "smug" carries a negative connotation. This is what upset most Mac users that I know. If he had used the term "proud" or "content" there would have been very little in the way of flaming.
It's all about the connotation that was carried by the headline.
A group that has been bashed for nearly the last twenty years are touchy about how you represent them?!?! What would you expect? The Windows crowd have tried every conceivable way in the world to put the Mac community down and get them to give up the OS and hardware selection that they chose and they're touchy? Again, what do you expect?
I hate to break this to you, but your lack of knowledge of the community is one of the key reasons that all the other "communities" have chosen to attack those in the Mac camp for all this time.
Look at all the discussion. His article has gotten 2 days of coverage, and lots of attention. I applaud the article, and if some of us Mac users get a little bothered, I hope they at least look at the points he made.
I do expect, though, that Mac users will take umberage anytime some one, especially another Mac user, points out anything less than glowing about our favorite platform. I don't think of it so much as smugness, rather a learned response to all the years of FUD targeted at Apple through the well know "business" practices of Microsoft. It is hard at times to not appear smug when the truth aboout Windows vulnerabilities is so predominant.
I believe our Bill may have thrown down the gauntlet to all the hackers out there :)
:P
expect a flurry of updates and patches for the mac o/s from Apple very soon
*Gratuitous Sig/Plug* Heres my website - firesuite
"Mac users are divided equally between elitist snobs and fucking morons."p ostcount=852
http://www.cad-forums.com/showpost.php?p=1481181&
...because "hacker" sounds way sexier than "code drone."
OS X and Linux are currently less popular. This means they will be infected with less stuff. They are gaining popularity, though slowly. However, becuase of the nature of open-source software, patches can be applied every time there is a new vulnerability discovered or exploited, so that by the time it is a really big target most of the obvious problems will be fixed. At least that's the theory. I've heard that one current example of this is the fact that MS IIS is a fraction of its market compared to Apache, but that IIS gets a disproportionately large amount of attacks compared to Apache (which receives a very tiny number of attacks).
The 'Net is a waste of time, and that's exactly what's right about it. - William Gibson
He was, in fact, a pontificating Mac owner.
On a planet far far away live two races of people; The Gatesians (who make up 90-95% of the poulation) and the Jobsians (who make up the rest).
The Gatesians have weak immune systems and frequently suffer from viral and bacterial infections, often necessitating a hospital stay. The problem is so bad that almost all Gatesians wear face masks and rubber gloves, use copious amounts of anti-bacterial soap, sterilize all items they come in contact with and get immunisation shots on a weekly basis. And despite all this they continue to get sick.
Jobsians, on the other hand, have very strong immune systems, so strong that no Jobsian has gotten so much as the sniffles in the last few years. Many Gatesians make the claim that the Jobsians don't get sick simply because there aren't enough of them for an infection to spread. The Jobsians point out that there are no known viruses or bacteria that affect Jobsians (the odd rumoured virus built in a secret government lab aside).
A few scare mongers (like Bill Thompson) like to argue that the Jobsians need to take the same precautions against disease that the Gatesians do and that if they don't if a virus or bacteria that can infect them ever shows up will wipe them all out. For the most part the Jobsians just ignore the ranting and get on with enjoying their carefree life and laugh at all the sneezing, coughing and hospitalized Gatesians.
"Grab them by the pussy" -- President of the United States of America
Thompson has a track record of writing articles that are either ill-informed or technically incorrect and then defending himself with the lame excuse that his is an 'opinion piece'. I can never understand why Slashdot (or the BBC for that matter) give him the space he clearly doesn't deserve. He tries to present himself as something of a guru, but probably couldn't get a job as a junior IT helpdesk worker (apologies to all the highly competent helpdesk guys out there).
He's the poster-boy for the phrase "a little knowledge is a dangerous thing". If you look at his resume it's clear that he tried to make it as a techie, but didn't have what it takes, and so became a "commentator". It's funny - there used to be a feedback section on his BBC column, but it mysteriously disappeared a few months ago, shortly after he posted some badly researched drivel about problems copying his archived email from Windows to OS X and got shot down in flames by almost everyone who responded.
It is also worth noting that "if Macs were as popular as Windows" is one of those hypotheses contrary-to-fact; perhaps, if that were the case, OS X would contain further safeguards. Perhaps Apple would bundle their own antivirus software, and perhaps it would work, and perhaps it would not pester me for yet another year's subscription to continue my protection. Perhaps they would release that information on an RSS feed, and perhaps they would propagate it via a peer-to-peer network. If I can assume that pigs fly (that a false thing is true), there's no limit to the possibilities. We can argue endlessly about what might be; what is, is an OS that is more secure by design (never had ActiveX, root privileges require a password for each activation, ports kept shut by default), that has not been host to anything like all the vermin that infest and attack Windows boxes.
Ahahah... I am near to teh top. Thanks lamer!
It sounds like a familiar tactic found in a great deal of "news" reporting. The reporter (or possibly the editor) inserts a non-essential but "hot" bit of verbiage in the story... to say that they "sex it up" not only describes it, but is an example of doing it.
And sadly it works all too well. Because people are attracted to controversy more than to emotionless recitals of facts... presto... more clicks, more newspapers sold, more viewers, etc.
Taking part in the media's game can have dire consequences... the "sexed up" example is from a BBC story in which a reporter asked a British WMD expert if some Iraq intelligence had been "sexed up"... a reporter's clever way of getting the headline-grabbing word "sex" into the story.
The unfortunate interviewee was naive enough to play into it. The politics were beyond nasty, they were lethal. The penalty for responding to the reporter's troll was that the interviewee ended up dead. The reporter... well, the standard editor's response is that they stand on "journalistic credibility" and stand behind every word. Thus the press is in a position to silence any argument with the press.
There, sadly, is your free press and independent journalistic ethics... using button-pushing words like "smug" in this instance... in a general way inserting trivial but provocative tidbits in and around the straight facts. Forget the conspiracy theory, put away the tinfoil hat, this one is just an application of basic psychology... it's all about the revenue...
Newsflash: No OS is infallible.
That is all.
EOT
...was that Mac users are smug and complacent, that they are ignoring their vulnerabilities. To wit, "I worry that we do not take security seriously enough as a community."
What, pray tell, are Mac users *not* doing (in their complacency) that they *should* be doing? Are they not updating their software as often as other users? Do they not run firewalls? Do they not backup data? Are they not spending millions of dollars for security software? Are they somehow *more* complacent than other users?
Where's the data? Whose *scientific* survey or research was quoted?
This is just another example of shoddy I-got-a-deadline tech journalism. The reference to the SANS trash should be enough to tip you off. If he really wanted to do the Mac community a service, he could expose the security software ripoff that's been sucking millions from Mac users for years to protect them from ghosts and goblins.
This is the original sin of mac users. I myself, a mac user, have told someone that it is okay to open an email because they are using a mac. Security needs to be an important consideration in all computer use. In the same way that the /. community has imposed upo the world that good passwords are important, we must impose that good security practices are important.
A question I haven't seen answered: apparently the Windows version installs the spyware and backdoor even if you reject the EULA. Is this true for the Mac version?
It's interesting to point out that Mac users are defending themselves mainly by bringing up Windows/*nix.
The article doesn't COMPARE anything, it doesn't even mention anything besides he found Mac users to full of themselves.
"I'm immune on a Mac because Windows has 10k Viruses!"
NOTHING is secure, whether it be remote or local access.
On the other hand some Mac users are setting themselves up for failure. I have one client who INSISTS on chmod 777 -R / because he finds security "inconvenient" -- and any viruses that DO hit the wild are 100% guaranteed to hit their network. They miss the old MacOS and its total lack of security. I'm sure they're not the only ones with that shortsighted and foolish outlook based on the false sense of security that "if it hasn't happened yet, it never will"
/. so take my advice: download clamav (it's FREE - as in beer, as in speech, etc.), install it, and run it on occasion. I'd point you at the project page only I know that you know how to google. :) clamav is a very small project, taking up very little space, and again it's FREE and virus signatures are usually updated more than once per day.
Not only that, but if you have any shares/dropboxes/etc. openly accessible in a heterogeneous network, windows viruses can plant viruses there or infect documents which other windows users can pick up from that share and infect their machines with the scumware. Heck, even Linux or Solaris servers running file shares will be running clamav and antivir, and be scanning the samba shares any time a file is accessed.
Additionally, like it or not, there are worms which coulc conceivably infect your mac and add it to script kiddie's DDoS attacks. If you're running a web server with OpenSSL (or a commercial variant thereof) chances are you're vulnerable to slapper. ClamAV detects slapper and can remove it.
Mr. Bill Thompson I KNOW you're reading this thread on
The Christian Right is Neither (Christian nor right). See: Matthew 23, Matthew 25, Ezekiel 16:48-50
This is an entirely naive question as I have no knowledge of viruses or how they spread, etc. But is it possible that at 3%, there simply aren't enough Macs to support network propagation of a virus? Or rather, that the density of Macs simply won't support it? Just thinking aloud and wanted to put the thought out there.
but i'm too god damn busy moving the mouse over my dock icons and saying OOOOOOO as they magnify..... that and wishing i could play counterStrike on this motherfucker.
just kidding fuck mac.
once the mac market becomes big enough to build profitable zombie networks
will you see the exploits .
until then, the enginers of these networks will continue to focus on what works and works well
Music the Paint dancefloor the canvas your body the brush
What a donkey! In one sentence he's going on about how macusers are irresponsible when it comes to viruses/malware, in the next sentence he says that he doesn't use anti-virus s/w on his mac. The phrase "Twat" springs to mind, I guess its alright for twat journos to get viruses in email and happily forward them on to their pc mates but not us dweeb members of the public.
The Mac appeals to two sorts. Those that just want to get some work done without computer hassles, and those geeks who like Unix, love the bundle of stuff that comes with the Mac (e.g. my favourite editor, vi).
It has two communities, sometimes in the same person: I too have days when I just don't want to be hassled with weird dropped connections, or have to screw around with drivers to get my camera working.
K.
DRM is security through obscurity. If he has ever defended the efficacy of DRM, he just shot himself down.
VLC FOR MAC IS DYING! IF YOU DEVELOP, PLEASE SAVE IT!!
"Sure, there haven't ever been any viruses for OSX, and there probably never will be, while there are thousands upon thousands of Windows viruses out there... but you Mac users are INDEFENSIBLE in your smugness!"
This sounds like a case of rather defensible smugness to me.
For the most part the Jobsians just ignore the ranting and get on with enjoying their carefree life and laugh at all the sneezing, coughing and hospitalized Gatesians.
As a Mac user, I nodded at your extended analogy and laughed at your last sentence.
That's when I realized that Thompson is not entirely mistaken.
blog
-Eric
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
Why would they have to, when virtually ever major PC game out there is designed exclusively for them?
-Eric
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
Only yesterday I got a little window telling me there was "Security Update" and wanted me to "click to install".
I trashed it before it could do more harm, thank god!
Serious though, while I agree with the guy in general (yes we are smug, no we don't care) I'd like to see more proof from him that lots of mac users aren't updating their computer when asked to.
Everybody I know does the intelligent thing the moment Software Update pops up and has their firewall on at all times. This apart from maybe being a bit smug about it. That may not be enough for real security maniacs, but has proven to be more than sufficient for all regular (professional or home) mac users the last five years. So, what else does he want us to do? Shout "the end is near"?
And BTW most people I know really don't know who this mythical ROOT person is and wouldn't know how to log in as him anyway.
I think, therefore I am...I think.
Frequent updates are necessary, especially when it comes to networked systems.
When it comes to systems which are exposed to the outside world, you mean, or perhaps to potentially hostile users.
For systems like dedicated fileservers which are safely hidden behind a firewall, I'm not so sure that system updates or patches are all that important.
Mainframe/UNIX Bit Twiddler and long time Windows/Linux Hobbyist.
The Theorem Theorem: If If, Then Then.
There is a trick to winning that argument. I learnt it from my father.
The key is to start the argument yourself. All you have to do is reverse the roles, and complain about women always leaving the seat up. Don't accept the idea that men do it - that's preposterous, after all!
There's just no way to win against such a foolproof line of reasoning...
My dad usually takes it one step further and complains about women who miss the toilet and make the floor wet. Someone will always try to say that it is physically impossible. For a suitable reply, just use your imagination. It's not as hard as it sounds. Make sure to keep a straight face!
Michael Nelson
I know that the parent is clearly flamebait.
So, (tongue-in-cheek) what's up with that pansy sport called American football?
Surely real men play rugby, or Gaelic/Aussie rules football. Personally, I like cricket.
Michael Nelson
No wonder he's worried about Mac users being naive about security, when he writes "The security model in Unix-based operating systems like Darwin means that it is very hard to see how an infection could spread, even if an executable could be compromised."
The main reason that Mac OS X is more secure than Windows is that Mac OS X has a smaller surface area exposed to attack, but it has a smaller surface area exposed to attack than most default Linux distros, or most historical networked UNIX systems... and the main reason it's got a smaller surface area exposed to attack is because of the way the browser works... not because of the UNIX roots of OS X. Browsers on OS 9 were also safer than on Windows, and for the same reason.
Once an executable is compromised, it's little harder to transmit an email virus or set up a trojan horse in OS X than in Windows. You don't need "root" to send email or listen on a high port or sneak a credible-sounding backdoor program into a user's login preferences.
Both companies pursue that old-fashioned model of closing their codebases and asking developers to sign NDA's.
Here is the source to WebCore as shipped with OS X 10.4.4, which is Apple's equivalent to Microsoft's HTML control. Now, this is kind of an important part of the OS from the point of view of security, since Microsoft's HTML control is by far the biggest security problem in the Windows world, and has been since 1997. The BSD core, everything you need to get to a self-hosting OS with login and user-account security, is in the tree at opendarwin.org. From the point of view of a security analysis, the difference between Microsoft and Apple's openness is pretty much as wide as you can get between two software companies.
Oh, certainly, there's a lot of OS X that isn't as open as this... but even the closed parts are amazingly transparent and easily understood compared to Windows, and no important part of Windows is open at all.
Only the kernel, Darwin, is opensource, but what about the application layer?
WebCore, the majority of both Safari and Dashboard, is here.
OpenSSH, remote login.
launchd, system startup and configuration.
The shell, print spooler, local web server, all the security components, the equivalents of virtually all Windows services and registry, basically every command line application or daemon is there. Not a lot of the GUI, with the exception of WebCore, but a hell of a lot more than just the kernel, and the corresponding components to most of the parts of Windows that have been big security problems: RPC, HTML and HTTP, IIS, CMD.EXE and the Registry, remote file access and file-and-print service, it's all in there.
Safari and Dashboard are the bits I'm most worried about in OS X. WebCore is there, and the parts of them that aren't in WebCore are pretty thin shell layers (in fact they've been re-implemented by third parties). The biggest component left out that doesn't seem to be covered is LaunchServices (not launchd, that's an unrelated coincidence), and you can limit your exposure to any LaunchServices-related issues by disabling "Open Safe Files after Downloading" in Safari.
Apple removed the One True VI from Panther and replaced it with that sorry compromise "VIM", which was probably written by an Emacs user. And not a REAL Emacs user, no, I'll bet they were using Lucid Emacs or something.
(Actually, to make full disclosure, I wrote some of the code that ended up in vim. Ironic, wot?)
Yes. Consider, as just one example, the way in which a woman gives birth. Before modern medicine, many women died in childbirth (and in some parts of the world, still do) because a baby's huge head has to fit through a small hole in the pelvis. Why go through a small hole in a bone when there is a large soft abdomen with no bones in the way? Evolution did this.
An Intelligent Designer would have installed a zipper.
Peter
I admit to my lameness as a VI user now that I have basked in this guys obvious "real sysadmin" power!
Horns are really just a broken halo.
First I need to note that I have already posted on the BBC forum a couple of years ago that they are biased in favour of Windows and neglect Linux and OSX.
The obscurity argument I get so damn mad at. I will go into some history here. On the Amiga, back when there were only 3 million Amigas worldwide, there were hundreds of Viri. Later when there were 6 million Amigas, we may have gotten to 1000 Viri including the slight variences. It was known as the most virus plagued machine of it's day. Dos and Windows machines had not many more machines in numbers during that time and they also had enough viri to make life difficult.
Linux has until very recently been obscure when compared to OSX. Yet there have been a few viri released during it's time of "obscurity".
If systems that have far fewer machines than OSX can have slight, moderate or severe problems with viri, then one must conclude that OSX has to be credited with far stronger security than just "obscurity". My conclusion is that obscurity is little to no protection from viri.
Article One
You know, a Pinto is a really unsafe car, you will probably get killed driving one. Volvo owners think they don't have to worry about getting killed because their cars are a lot safer than a Pinto. But a Volvo isn't a Sherman tank, so those Volvo owners might get killed.
Article Two
You know, I thought Volvo owners wouldn't like my article, heck I'm a Volvo owner. I might have gotten some specific Volvo stuff wrong, but I stand by what I said, you are less likely to be killed in a Sherman tank.
1. Do not talk about Mac vulnerabilities.
2. DO NOT TALK ABOUT MAC VULNERABILITIES.
Were this an actual ecosystem, the Jobsians would quickly outnumber the Gatesians, unless the Gatesians could reproduce despite being sick all the time...
--js--
Usage: km/h for speed (kilometers per hour); kph for very slow impulses (kilopond hours).