Slashdot Mirror
Apple Hit By Hackers Who Targeted Facebook
snydeq writes "Apple was recently attacked by hackers who infected the Macintosh computers of some employees, the company said on Tuesday in an unprecedented disclosure that described the widest known cyber attacks against Apple-made computers to date, Reuters reports. 'The same software, which infected Macs by exploiting a flaw in a version of Oracle Corp's Java software used as a plug-in on Web browsers, was used to launch attacks against Facebook, which the social network disclosed on Friday. ... A person briefed on the investigation into the attacks said that hundreds of companies, including defense contractors, had been infected with the same malicious software, or malware. The attacks mark the highest-profile cyber attacks to date on businesses running Mac computers.'"
And I've only owned and used PCs for the past 15-20 years. Yes, Macs it does just *work* but never did I ever consider it 100% or foolproof. I like their design and simplicity. But I'm also learning Bash shell in Red hat which throws me back to the DOS days and I like it even better. I can't stand people who put Macs on a pedestal and glamorize its terminal and *nix roots. True, it's there and functional but the people who preach that to me have never used it.
At the end of the day, computers are just tools, and the perceived danger is proportional to what kind of data is in the computer and the particular role the computer is playing in the workplace/ home. If I'm just storing movies or working as an occasional render machine, then it's disposable as far as I'm concerned. But if it's mission-critical, then I treat it like Fort Knox with several layers of security and backup plans.
Anyways, computers are just tools and I believe the attack vector will always be the operator. Seems like Spear Phishing is the best balanced attack for the amount of effort these days.