On 9 Jun 2005 at 14:47, Darcy James Argue wrote: > On 09 Jun 2005, at 2:34 PM, Ken Durling wrote: > > > I've always been told that the reason Macs don't get viruses is that > > the vastly lower numbers of Mac users doesn't attract the miscreants > > who write the viruses, not because of any inherent immunity. Have I > > been misinformed? > > There's certainly some truth to the "low market share = no viruses" > argument, but it's also true that OS X is fundamentally more secure > than Windows. . . .
Not fundamentally more secure, but by default configured more securely. It takes very little work to make Windows as safe as OS X. > . . . Microsoft's insistence on making Internet Explorer an > integral part of the OS also makes it particularly vulnerable to > malware exploits. No one in their right mind uses IE. But let me say that the OS integration of IE is actually much more limited than you might think. The IE rendering engine is hardly ever loaded on my PC, because I don't use Outlook or Outlook Express, and don't use IE as my default browser. > The first thing anyone tells you on the PC if you want to avoid > malware is, "Don't use IE." (Of course, that's also good advice even > if you just want a half-decent web browsing experience.) Well, you seem to me to be confusing two categories of malware: 1. viruses 2. spyware. IE is the main vector for the latter, but email is the prime vector for viruses, which were, I believe the topic of the discussion. > It's also true that Mac users tend to be more positively disposed > towards Apple than Windows users are towards MS. (How's _that_ for an > understatement?) So I think there are fewer Mac users who are out to > "get" Apple, the way some Windows malware authors seem to be trying to > punish Microsoft. I think most current Windows malware authors are not after users. They are after MONEY. They get this money in two ways: 1. hijacking IE, to bring eyeballs to their websites (spyware). 2. hijacking PCs with trojans that are used to set up bot-nets of compromised computers that they then provide as a service to their customers, and use them for sending spam. Mac OS X does not have the spyware vulnerabilities of IE, but it is still vulnerable to the traditional spyware, the adware kind that is installed in the background of certain kinds of software like Kazaa on Windows (dunno if there's a Mac version?). And OS X could be compromised with a trojan via socially engineered viruses, but there are more chances for that to be ineffective because of the default configuration of the OS. And, BTW, WinXP SP2 with the firewall turned on is also going to be pretty hard for the proprieters of these bot-nets to exploit, though, again, an end user can easily be tricked into authorizing a nefarious program through the firewall. That problem is there for any software firewall. -- David W. Fenton http://www.bway.net/~dfenton David Fenton Associates http://www.bway.net/~dfassoc _______________________________________________ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
