LOL!
Posted on 09/22/2009 6:08:18 AM PDT by Sudetenland
Hackers just like the PC more.
Regardless of which side you're on (though as a true computing enthusiast, you shouldn't be taking sides), you've heard the arguments back and forth on the which operating system is truly safer – Mac OS X or Windows.
It is of the opinion of Charlie Miller, a well known Mac security guru, that even Snow Leopard, the latest version of Mac OS X, isn't as safe as Windows.
One key point is that Snow Leopard still doesn't have ASLR, or address space layout randomization, which randomly arranges the position of key data making it harder for hackers to target for exploits.
Miller said to TechWorld that Apple didn't change the ASLR from 10.5 to 10.6: "Apple didn't change anything. It's the exact same ASLR as in Leopard, which means it's not very good."
Apple didn’t completely missed the chance to tighten up security in Snow Leopard though, as the new QuickTime solves a lot of the issues that Mac OS X had before.
"Apple rewrote a bunch of QuickTime," said Miller, "which was really smart, since it's been the source of lots of bugs in the past."
One thing that Snow Leopard did adapt, which Windows has had since XP SP2, is DEP (data execution prevention). With DEP, buffer overflow attacks are much harder to execute.
Despite Miller's opinion that Windows is the more secure OS, the large install based of Microsoft-based systems make them a much more attractive target for hackers. Still, Miller would like to see security on all platforms.
"Snow Leopard's more secure than Leopard, but it's not as secure as Vista or Windows 7," he said. "When Apple has both [in place], that's when I'll stop complaining about Apple's security."
Source : Tom's Hardware US
Macbots attack in 5...4...3...2...1...
LOL!
I just picked up the Green AV spyware virus on my PC, and I’ve already posted a help request yesterday on FR, and I have received many responses on how to remove it, but the fact that I got it in the first place aggravates me. I gave up and gave it to a neighbor who has some computer expertise, so I hope he can get rid of it for me. Otherwise, I will have to restore my hard drive to its original state when I bought it, and that will be a pain as anyone who has a computer knows.
Dang right! Who are you going to believe? Me or your own lyin' eyes??!!!
If you repeat something often enough to enough people it becomes a fact. ie: Macs cannot be attcked.
But security doesn’t mean a thing when your motivation is an ego stroke.
There is a reason that you see a lot of Apple computer in K to 4th grade classrooms but then see PC’s in the higher grades. It doesn’t take any knowledge to use a Mac, but in the real world the job you get, 95% of the computer knowledge you need will be for a PC.
I'm a PC guy myself, but this kind of post is one of the most annoying things I see on FR. It gets used WAAAAY too much.
It's like "don't you dare disagree with me, in fact if you do, I'm going to call you a xxxBOT in advance and you'll just be jumping in because I TOLD you to!! HA!"
It's smug, snarky and juvenile.
How about that. Only 2 posts before the gratuitous insults of people who use Macs. Who's the bot?
All,
This article is a retread:9/17 Snow Leopard less secure than Windows, says hacker
have your neighbor friend run combofix.exe on it. google to find. cures most spyware infections.
The whole point of that kind of post is to head off any real discussion. It's a classic lefty tactic.
Or you could just buy a Mac...
Precisely.
I would *HOPE* FReepers would be above it.
Thank you! I'm really growing weary of the Mac folks constantly drilling the "you need to get a Mac" vibe into my head. No thank you! I'm quite content with my PC, and I've NEVER had a virus on my machines. Practicing safe browsing and treating everything as a threat keeps me safe. PCs are more ubiquitous, and I don't have to deal with BootCamp or a dual-boot scenario.
And as far as the xxxBOT comments, I agree. No need to blast people for their opinions, but leave me alone. I like my PC just fine. I don't want to spend $2000 for a Mac.
Yep, the huge hairball of code, known as Windows never will make it easy nor pretty to secure a system.
Security problems with *NIXes are usually due to operator error.
But all code has errors in it, as windows users knows quite well.
The savior for windows is the new 64 bit NX(no execute) bit technology in the CPU chip, separating out code and data, so the data cannot execute. This should do away with over 95% of the known windows viruses. Script kiddies are done.
I think both MS and Apple are worried about Linux, like Ubuntu, which is now good enough and free.
I have Windows 7 on my daily driver and it is fine. I am purposely running with only the NX technology enabled and no virus checking. I do a lot of testing on nefarious sites, for research only of course. The good news is most big email providers do the virus test on every email that comes through their system.
Shhhhh!
Don't tell it to the Macbots. They think they look so darn cute overpaying for an Apple logo, and walking down the street packing a Mac. Don't burst their bubble. LOL!
Who you gonna believe, scientific studies of security issues in Vista/Win 7 versus the Mac, or yet another spouting of anti-Microsoft, open source propaganda from some anonymous bomb thrower on the internet?
Malwarebytes and SuperAntiSpyware (both free) will get rid of almost all of these. What most people do not realize is that the cleaninng programs are much better these days and can get rid of the junk without causing problems.
Also if you are using Norton or McAfee get rid of them as they are junk. You are better off with AVG Free or AntiVir Free. BOth of the free ones will do a better job.
Hackers are not interested in MAC because they are such a small share of the market, why bother.
A good hacker can hack anything, but wants a big bang for their buck....go for the PC the largest market.
That's a bit rich coming from a guy, who's very tag line, is one of the biggest pieces of disinformation about Windows I have ever seen isn't it?
You are the Ayatollah of classic lefty tactics. And you turn round and compound it all by accusing others of exactly what you are doing. Now that is classic left tactics.
This has been debunked so many times we need a macro for the response.
All software has issues.
Macs and other Unices are safer than the predominant OS because of better design. It takes something like 3 separate affirmative actions by a user to get malware to install on a Mac.
So far, there are zero self-propagating viruses in the wild for OSX, when it has a userbase somewhere around 50 million, (conservatively - I don't know the exact number), yet worms have spread on the internet when the global target of the worm was only 10K devices.
Please tell us what the magic number is that will suddenly have us see the spread of viruses and worms like you see out there in the MS-Windows world. Is it 60M, 100M? Why not give us a number rather than just continuing to spout debunked FUD?
Only 7 posts before the Thread Police arrive.
Is it? In the 15 years I've been running Linux, I've never:
Can you say the same thing about Windows?
Well Duh , so can a thousand others. FUDMiller's claim to fame is that if you give him the Root(administrative)
password, he can crack a system.
This entire thread is a FUD-fest. Keep repeating the install base “theory” and hope others accept it as fact.
You would think by now, one person would want the notoriety of writing the first Mac virus to bring down this itsy bitsy user base.
Oh, and yes I do earn my living working Windows, but a Windows OS will never be my personal OS again.
Sorry, the article is typical FUD that comes out, right around the time of an MS OS release.
40 years of experience of OS and computer design is my guide.
While as I said, Windows 7 is better, it’s still not good enough.
\
MS produces BS studies throughout the years.
wooh Come down buddy.
My answer was the simple answer. I if were a hacker why bother with such small market share. On the other hand I might make it my life’s mission to crack them wide open and be “the hacker”.
Oh, and by the way I am not PC but MAC.........
Regular as clockwork.
Funny thing is, I think I've spent something like 5 minutes on a Mac my whole life. I respond to Mac FUD largely because of the gratuitous insults tossed around by MS-Windows users. I prefer Linux to Mac because it suits the way I work better from what I've seen. Next computer zeugma's wife gets will be a Mac though. She's not as happy with Linux as I am.
Not thread police. Just pointing out that there may be comments of use on the previous thread. Personally, I don't mind dupes, especially when they are separated by a couple of days, as it gives more folk an opportunity to view/comment on the topic than might otherwise do so.
“So, if 35 million computers isn’t enough, give me a number of macs that need to be out there before the whole “there aren’t enough macs” line is no longer justified.”
The real reason hackers don’t go for Macs.
The owner has already spent all of his money on a Mac, an iPhone, a MacBook, the newest iPhone, an iPod, 500 iPhone applications and a subscription to every Mac magazine. So they have no money left.
The Mac owner has a couple of hundred tunes that he bought for a buck apiece on iTunes. The hacker got all of these for free years ago on newsgroups.
Most of the keystrokes you can steal by hacking a Apple user involve them telling another Apple user about the latest and greatest Apple product they bought, the latest magazine/internet article about an upcoming Apple product they plan to buy when it is released, the latest Mac vs PC commercial which they think is the greatest one yet, or the latest news about Steve Jobs.
The problem is, the simple answer really doesn't cut it these days as we have actual history and examples of systems with vanishingly small numbers being actively targeted. The "simple answer" makes sense to a lot of people because they don't actually know what they are talking about.
Actually this thread is pretty full of anti-Mac zealots.
Well,............
Whether that is true or not(and anyone can say anything on the internet top push an agenda which you clearly have), that doesn't mean there are no viruses for Linux.
From Kerpersky.:
The myth of *nix security
http://www.viruslist.com/en/weblog?weblogid=208187702
Viruses: not a Linux problem?
http://www.viruslist.com/en/weblog?weblogid=170272380
“Had a trojan”
Here ya go:
“The number of malicious programs—including viruses, Trojans, and other threats—specifically written for Linux has been on the increase in recent years and more than doubled during 2005 from 422 to 863”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linux_malware
“
Run anti-virus”
That is your choice, but then there is now plenty of anti-virus products for Linux, on account of the fast increasing number of viruses, trojans etc that are being written for Linux out there. See my link above. They wouldn't be selling anti-Virus for linux if there were no market for the product would they?
“Cleaned up the drive (de-fragmented it)”
I like defragin my drive. You just schedule it overnight or when you are not using the computer. It makes the computer run better. It's free CPU cycles being used. What is there not to like about that?
“Can you say the same thing about Windows? “
Given that I have had anti-virus/malware software on my computers for years, and they are automatically kept up to date, I don't even remember the last time I had any virus attack n any Windows computer of mine. Been happily running my Windows PC's with no problems at all, thank you very much.
And oh, Windows runs all the essential apps that I need, plus every single AAA game out there.
You can't say the same about Linux.
Got any more strawman arguments to make?
Uh...geee, compared to a billion PC’s running Winders, Macs are just a flea-spec of very expensive, elitist, insignificance. The poseur’s computer.
On the internet, even a dog is a King.
Now why don't you show us any scientific studies and papers you have actually written on computer security eh?And no, sheer bomb throwing is not good enough.
“While as I said, Windows 7 is better, it’s still not good enough.”
No good enough according to who? You?
Don't make me laugh.
It's going top be good enough for the 90% of computer buyers out there, and that is what counts.
Not to mention studies that are coming out would suggest that Windows 7 IS in fact more secure than the Mac.
Get used to that idea and it won't hurt so much ok?
I am aware that *nix systems have started to be targeted. I never said that they are immune. In fact, if you search some here on FR, you'll see my opinion that people and organizations should have a mix of OS/systems in order to minimize any particular security threat.
I am not a gamer. The biggest game I play is Diablo II. And it runs under Linux. I play some small puzzle-type games as well. They also run under Linux. There are very few these days that won't run under Linux if you know what you are doing. My kids play games. They also only run Linux. There are games out there that don't require you to pay $50 a shot--and they are just as fun.
My advice to people considering the switch is to take inventory of the programs run, determine if any can't run under the OS they are considering, and decide if they can live without those.
If they can't--don't switch. Regardless of my tagline, I tell people to run the OS that runs the programs they can't live without.
The desktop is for pikers.
LOL ...
If you want on or off the Mac Ping List, Freepmail me.
Back when i had SuSE Professional 9.2, i installed AVG for Linux. i was pleasantly surprised to find out that i could run it on my WINDOWS XP hard drive (dual boot) from Linux.
i did once find a virus hiding in my Firefox cache. It was huddled in a corner, shivering, lost, looking for the registry.
Of course, i terminated it with extreme prejudice, after dissecting it with emacs to look at the function calls.
Thank goodness it isn't true!
Apple doesn’t have one feature that, if an attacker gains access to the system helps him better exploit it.
Except OS X is harder to gain access to in the first place.
Randomization is a good feature, and I wish OS X had it, but it’s just one part of a defense in depth. To claim an OS is less secure in the first place because it doesn’t have the feature is ridiculous. A better overall security architecture is far more important.
Not quite. Miller ignores Apple's different approach to system security. Miller for some reason prefers the Windows ASLR and DEP to the methods that Apple has chosen to use. First of all, Apple DOES use address space layout randomization for their dynamic libraries and system command locations. Miller also totally ignores the fact that data stacks and the heap are NON-EXECUTABLE memory spaces in OSX so his worry about buffer overflows is over wrought.
The point still must be made that after eight years of trying, no one has made a successful self-duplicating, self-transmitting, self-installing malicious virus for Mac OSX. The number of viruses in the wild for OSX is still ZERO. There are fewer than a dozen known Trojans and Apple has included an anti-Trojan method into the OS at the system level in OSX Snow Leopard that recognizes the signatures of known Trojans on download and warns the user that they have fallen for the social engineering and are downloading a malicious app.
As was Vista. Windows 7 is nothing more than Windows NT
with this seasons shade of lipstick.
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