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I wonder why? Want to take the bet now? Or do you still claim an unpatched OSX box is perfectly secure, but you're not willing to bet on it?

And there is a lie, For-q, because I have never claimed "an unpatched OSX box is perfectly secure" because I know it isn't. YOU put those words in my mouth back in August '05 and then claimed I said them. It is a repeated lie, one among many on that ancient thread and this one, that you have made about what I have said. I do not appreciate your claiming I wrote things I did not write.

You repeatedly misrepresent what I and others write and then claim things we never said... a good example was your claim that I said YOU could win $25,000 by writing a Mac virus when what I had written was the factual statement: "There have been several substantial CASH prizes for writing a viable, transmittable and self propagating virus for the Mac (the last offering had to be withdrawn because of legal reasons) but all of them have gone unclaimed."

You lied by putting words in my mouth by claiming "Oh I see, when you laid down the challenge that I'd win $25,000 for creating a Mac Virus...doesn't constitute a bet."

You wrote, on August 8, 2005: How about we have a bet? I show you where a virus is possible and you leave Free Republic for 1 month?".

You lied when you claimed I withdrew the challenge when I never challenged YOU.

When I did not accept your ridiculous "bet" you lied again and wrote to another freeper, ". . . but Swordmaker challenged me to write a virus and that I'd win $25,000 (only to have the challenge withdrawn)."

And to another freeper, another lie: "Remember he's the lame brain that laid down the false challenge of $25,000."

Since I was and am familiar with every claimed "virus" for OS X and their failings to rise to the level of self-installation, self-transmission, and self-replication, you could not have won such a bet. I was curious what someone such as you who had demonstrated an abysmal ignorance of Macs and their operation seemed to think was an "Ace-in-the-hole" that you were going to pull out, claiming it was a possible virus. However, I don't play such childish games as you apparently want to do.

When I finally suggested a long closed potential Man-in-the-middle LAN vulnerability in OS X's update routines, you said "Wow you finally found it, but now you change your tune. Now it's ok if the exploit if fixed before it's ever exploited". . . but you changed a "virus" to an unexploited vulerability that was merely suggested as a possibility by the person who noticed it. Another lie.

The Man-in-the-Middle Attack you claim could have taken over Grandpa's or Grandma's Mac, the exploit you admitted was your intended exploit to win your proposed bed, was never "in the wild" or even demonstrated as possible. It was "postulated" by Russell Harding to Apple that it could be done IF someone had somehow "had root access to the target Mac and revised the SYSTEM Software Update routines" and then, using another Mac on the same local area network as the targeted computer, spoofed a server that exactly matched Apple's Update Server, then yes, one could install malware on the target Mac.

Apple did indeed close this supposed "vulnerability" forever by instituting validation routines to assure the user was actually connected to the Apple Server and that the System Update Routines on the computer to be updated had not been modified. But, For-q, for all of this "malicious" Man-in-the-middle" attack to take place, the evil doer had to have had local ROOT access (turned OFF by default) to Grandpa's and Grandma's target Mac computer in the first place and could have installed anything he wanted while he was sitting at their keyboard!

Everyone can go back in this web and find your lies about what I wrote here... your stretching and exaggerating and outright misrepresentations of what others write.

We won't even go into your penchant for ad hominem slurs such as "...you're the idiot on that one..." in your replies...