Comments on: Picky hackers prefer OS X

By: ptmmac

ptmmac — Wed, 04 Apr 2012 15:36:06 +0000

Louis,
I am have no first hand knowledge of this, but there are plenty of articles on the web about exploits that do not require me to enter my password to install malware. Apple equipment is better protected from machine amplified attacks like a virus. They are not better protected against malware. Obviously, never using your computer to surf dubious websites will greatly improve your chances of getting no viruses. The problem on a large network of users like a university network is that there are always a few selfish idiots in the crowd. I have spoken to sys admins here in Athens who complain about how vulnerable Macs are in their environment. This may well be ignorance about how to set up a secure Mac, but I doubt it. The rise in malware and exploits has been obvious over the last few years. I am afraid the days of not needing virus software on the mac are indeed drawing to a close. Time will tell.

By: Louis Wheeler

Louis Wheeler — Tue, 03 Apr 2012 23:10:38 +0000

It is even worse than that, Don. He repeats the canard that Mac OSX, Linux and Windows are equally vulnerable to being compromised. That is not so; Windows takes the prize on that one.

Whenever I see an article on a Macintosh virus; it always turns out to be a Trojan Horse. Why? Because Unix is immune to Virus’ and worms. Or if there is vulnerability being talked about, it is always in OSX’s Unix underpinnings. And that vulnerability never gets turned into an exploit. If Flash, Adobe PDF or some other third party program can be corrupted, it never leads to anyone taking over control of the computer.

It isn’t to say that Mac OSX is invulnerable, but it never is done. Hey! Even Fort Knox is vulnerable to being compromised, but it has a lot of deterrents as well. Microsoft Windows has no internal security. Hence, Microsoft has been forced to beef up the protection on its periphery.

Apple has not rushed to sandboxing, DEP and ALSR. Oh! It has had them in its 64 bit version of Snow Leopard and beyond. Mountain Lion will leave behind all its 32 bit systems and will be a major upgrade in security. But, few will notice.

By: Don

Don — Tue, 03 Apr 2012 15:20:19 +0000

Not surprising at all. The RFC 1392: Internet Users’ Glossary defines “hacker” as: “A person who delights in having an intimate understanding of the internal workings of a system, computers and computer networks in particular. The term is often misused in a pejorative context, where “cracker” would be the correct term.” A security “cracker” is someone whose purpose is to circumvent or break security measures.

It is disappointing, although unfortunately not surprising, that rather than use terms correctly and explain their accurate meanings, you simply choose to go along with the misinformed media masses.