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Posted on 10/24/2005 7:57:51 PM PDT by Swordmaker
Successful assaults by viruses and other malware on the Mac operating system are rare as it has better security and attackers are less keen
Ilya van Sprundel writes: In this article about the Mac Mini (see BW, 2/14/05, "And For Steve Jobs's Next Trick...") you say, "The Mac does have inherent security advantages, and it is much less prone to the sort of mysterious glitches that often make Windows a challenge."
I was wondering what "inherent security advantages" OS X has and why it is "much less prone to the sort of mysterious glitches." The only reason I can think of is that the hackers haven't turned on OS X yet.
(Excerpt) Read more at yahoo.businessweek.com ...
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Windows is junky! There are so many old pieces of junk scattered everywhere you're forever tripping over them.
Ummmm... Because nobody uses it...
Why attack the little guy. Nobody will notice.
More Fascinating News: Why Worms Shun Commodore 64s!!!
Only about 25,000,000 nobodies...
Last quarter Apple's market share topped 6.6% of all personal computers shipped.
Thanks for backing me up on that. Yes, 6.6% is nobody. Attacking 93.4% gets noticed.
Right, sure.
A scientific survey commissioned by Consumers Union, publisher of Consumer Reports, found that 14% of personal computer users use Macintoshes... and that comports well with the 25,000,000 that Newsweek reported this Spring... before two quarters of Mac growing Mac sales of over 1.25 million per quarter...
But I am sure you are convinced that 25,000,000 "nobodies" is nothing as well.
Think about this: In the world of murderers, thousands of murderers who rob the local and ubiquitous convenience market and kill the clerk go unnoticed except statistically. The murderers who are remembered are those who knock off the most protected people in the world...The theory that hackers are not in it for the infamy ignores the fact that almost all of the hackers who have been caught were caught because the BRAGGED to someone about it! The hacker who brings down the vaunted Mac OSX and its industrial strength UNIX under pinnings with a self-propagating virus would gain lots of bragging rights.
Stick with your preferred platform with its more than 80,000 known viruses and thousands of spyware and adware exploits... surely 180,000,000 Windows users can't be wrong... as they download the latest anit-this and anti-that definitions so they can feel marginally safe... all while ignoring a platform that has ZERO viruses, ZERO worms, ZERO spyware, and ZERO adware.
Enjoy your experience as a sheep.
You're half right.
Why waste time attacking a difficult to crack 5 or 6% when there's an easy to crack 90% out there?
It's not just the popularity of windows, it's that it's so much less secure the the other operating systems, and a wide base of, let's say "entry level" users makes it more likely your worm or virus will take hold.
"mysterious glitches that often make Windows a challenge"
I hear the Elephant Man has a little puffiness around the eyes. ;')
It appears from your inaccurate numbers that aside from no threat from virus writers, Apple's number crunching potential/usefulness is also equally limited.
My "inaccurate" numbers have sources... more up-to-date than yours.
You're first three citations refer to 2nd Quarter 2005 reports... which ended in March.
The second set of three is even older referring to 4th Quarter 2004.
Let's try something a little more up-to-date... say October 11, 2005:
According to market research group, NPD, Apple's market share through August of this year was a bit higher than normal:
...Apple's share of the U.S. retail market for computers ... grew to 6.6% from 4.3% in the same period last year... And even without taking into account sales of the newly introduced iPod nano, Apple's share of the U.S. retail market for digital-music players edged upward in recent months to 74%....Meanwhile, the company's line of Macintosh computers posted strong sales as well, with unit shipments up 5% sequentially and 48% from the fourth quarter a year earlier.
Arstechnica
Or let's look at another recent article that provides numbers:
TMO Reports - Apple's Mac Market Share Climbs to 4.3% in U.S.
by Bryan Chaffin, 6:25 PM EDT, October 17th, 2005Apple Computer's market share of the U.S. computer market climbed to 4.3% in the September quarter, according to market research firm IDC. That's an increase from 3.3% from the year-ago quarter. Apple was the number five vendor in the U.S. market, behind Dell, HP, Gateway, and Lenova (formerly IBM's PC division), and the company showed a steeper climb in U.S. unit sales, 44.6%, than any other company in IDC's report.
IDC broke Apple's U.S. unit sales at 737,000 units. By comparison, number one vendor Dell shipped some 5.638 million PCs in the US. Dell had 33.2% of the market, well ahead of perennial number two HP, which had 20.3% of the market.
Gateway, a company that worked hard to be allowed to license the Mac OS in the early 1990s, showed what IDC called the second consecutive quarter of significant recovery. In recent years, the company had been seen as being on hard times with declining fortunes. In the September quarter, Gateway was the number three U.S. vendor. The company posted a 35.2% growth in unit sales, second to Apple, and claimed some 6.4% market share.
... Worldwide, Apple saw a 48% increase in unit sales, but didn't crack the top five PC vendors (Dell, HP, Lenova, Acer, Siemens). IDC didn't specify Apple's worldwide market share, but extrapolating from Apple's own total Mac unit sales of 1.236 million Macs, a record quarter for the company, the company had some 2.3% global market share.
Such extrapolations are dangerous, at best, because IDC does not rely solely on corporate numbers, but uses its own formulas and research methods to determine units shipped. Using Apple's reported unit sales to determine market share based on IDC's global numbers is therefore an inexact science. Nonetheless, this rough and ready estimate shows Apple is holding its own in the global market.
Total worldwide unit sales increased by 17%, and IDC noted that this was despite increasing energy prices and interest rates. It was the low end of the market, a market Apple addressed earlier in 2005 with the inexpensive Mac mini, that drove overall growth. U.S. total shipments grew by 11%.
Unlike IDC, NPD discounts the total number of PCs sold to account for those that are shipped to be included in machinery where the PC is only peripheral to the function and are not "general purpose" computers... copiers, manufacturing control units, etc... that would not be used by individual users.
Then again this sentence may say it all "Much of Apple growth was spurred by help from sales of the iPod digital media device..."
None of these computer market share figures have anything to do with the iPod sales except that many iPod users are buying Macs.
There are over 100,000 Windows viruses, we get about 10,000 new viruses per year, and only a couple of them get noticed. The chances for getting noticed are slim to none.
However, write a successful Mac virus and you will get noticed.
The following is a post I put together to illustrate that obscurity doesn't help you if someone wants to make you a target:
Oh, I don't know. Perhaps as someone else already said on this thread, it might be done for the bragging rights of having created the first successful virus/worm to attack Macs.
I've seen this charge that the small market share that Mac and Linux have is what keeps them safe. It is repeated often enough and seems reasonable enough until you actually look at the history of some other worms/viruses.
Consider: the spread of the Witty Worm.
Quoth the poster:
Witty infected only about a tenth as many hosts than the next smallest widespread Internet worm. Where SQL Slammer infected between 75,000 and 100,000 computers, the vulnerable population of the Witty worm was only about 12,000 computers. Although researchers have long predicted that a fast-probing worm could infect a small population very quickly, Witty is the first worm to demonstrate this capability. While Witty took 30 minutes longer than SQL Slammer to infect its vulnerable population, both worms spread far faster than human intervention could stop them. In the past, users of software that is not ubiquitously deployed have considered themselves relatively safe from most network-based pathogens. Witty demonstrates that a remotely accessible bug in any minimally popular piece of software can be successfully exploited by an automated attack.
I suspect there are more than 12,000 Linux and/or Mac hosts out there on the internet.
Also, consider that the folks who were hit with this were also among the more security-concious users:
The vulnerable host population pool for the Witty worm was quite different from that of previous virulent worms. Previous worms have lagged several weeks behind publication of details about the remote-exploit bug, and large portions of the victim populations appeared to not know what software was running on their machines, let alone take steps to make sure that software was up to date with security patches. In contrast, the Witty worm infected a population of hosts that were proactive about security -- they were running firewall software. The Witty worm also started to spread the day after information about the exploit and the software upgrades to fix the bug were available.
Show me a successful worm/virus against Macs and I'll listen. Until then, your talking point is FUD.
Perhaps this is why the US Army moved army.mil over to OSX - they figured hackers wouldn't care enough to hack it if it was moved onto Apple equipment...
If there are "sources" why not list the URL for them in your post, at least one must be available, right?
or has Apple 'stuffed the channel' with the new 'mini-Mac' to account for the sudden increase in sales for the last several quarters and nobody wants to actually post this info on the Internet?
or is Apple marketing/communications to afraid of viruses to log on to the Internet to post any current data?
Hey, welcome back! Good to see you.
However, the falacy in this "summing up" is this erroneous statement and conclusion:
The big difference is that actual exploits of Mac vulnerabilities have been extremely rare, and that suggests a lack of interest by attackers.
The fact is that, discounting two trojan programs that hit a couple of greedy Mac users who thought the 300K file they downloaded, installed and executed was a pirated version of Office for Mac, the "actual exploits" are non-existent. A couple of proofs of concept that demonstrated some possible vulnerabilities that were closed within a couple of weeks of exposure, like "Opener" or "renepo", might be added to the list but they were not "actual exploits".
...and Windows, with 90%-plus of the market, is where the money is.
Money. They say that Money is the root of all evil. Think about the lure of 17,000,000 to 25,000,000 TOTALLY UNPROTECTED Mac users out there (who obviously have more money than sense according to PC users because they buy expensive Macs) who are vulnerable to a new viruses and spyware that could steal their identity information... and it hasn't happened. Gee... I wonder why not.
You want sources? OK:
Apple grabs 6.6% market share of U.S. personal computer retail market through AugustTuesday, October 11, 2005 - 09:56 AM EST
"Apple Computer reports fourth-quarter earnings later Tuesday, but it's what the company says on Wednesday that may grab investors' attention this week," Troy Wolverton reports for TheStreet.com. "Apple has scheduled a press event Wednesday where analysts expect CEO Steve Jobs to unveil a new, video-enabled iPod music player. The move would mark a significant evolution for the iPod, which has rapidly become one of Apple's most important products."
Wolverton reports, "The focus on Wednesday is emblematic of investor attitudes toward the stock. The general assumption is that the company is doing well, but that notion is dwarfed by the anticipation of -- or even concern about -- what comes next. It's not so much 'What have you done for me lately?' but 'What will you do for me later?'"
"Wall Street is betting that Apple was on track with that growth in its fourth quarter, which ended last month. Analysts polled by Thomson First Call are expecting the company to post earnings of 37 cents a share for the quarter on $3.73 billion in sales," Wolverton reports. "That projection is ahead of the company's own estimates and would mark a big gain over last year's results... But Wall Street has reason to be bullish. Apple has consistently delivered better-than-expected results in quarters of late. And recent data bode well for the just-completed one; studies indicate that Apple is gaining share in markets for PCs and digital-music players."
"Through August, Apple's share of the U.S. retail market for computers, excluding online sales, grew to 6.6% from 4.3% in the same period last year, according to market researcher NPD Group," Wolverton reports. "And even without taking into account sales of the newly introduced iPod nano, Apple's share of the U.S. retail market for digital-music players edged upward in recent months to 74%."
MacDailyNews Take: Keep in mind that excluding online sales also excludes Dell. Note that it also excludes Apple's online sales. The important fact is that NPD's measure of Apple's share was 4.3% in the year ago period and it has grown to 6.6% in a year.
TUAW article on Apple's 6.6% market share
Apple's Marketshare climbs to 6.6%Posted Oct 11, 2005, 3:00 PM ET by Dave Caolo
Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Apple Corporate, Apple FinancialFor as long as I can remember, the mantra has been "Apple's market share is at 5%." Today, this article at The Street reports, "Through August, Apple's share of the U.S. retail market for computers, excluding online sales, grew to 6.6% from 4.3% in the same period last year, according to market researcher NPD Group." Furthermore, Apple's share of the digital music player market is at 74%, and that's not including sales of the iPod nano.
Before you say the iPod is solely responsible for this climb, consider this quote from a related article on Money: "...analysts also agree that Apple enjoyed high shipments of its personal computers for the quarter, benefiting from promotions tied to the back-to-school season." Apple has long been innovating with highly desirable objects, as you and I (read: the Mac faithful) have long known. It would seem the that the general public is starting to catch on. Apple's timely, steady and very patient climb was (and continues to be) strategically orchestrated by Steve Jobs. Which makes me wonder: Just what will Apple do after Steve's retirement? We all joke that Steve routinely "sees the future," but his calculated patience and foresight are very real.
For now, I'm just looking forward to Wednesday.
Here's one that uses IDC's deflated 4.3% figure:
Monday - October 24, 2005
Macs dominate Amazon PC sales bestseller's list
By Jonny Evans Apple is the brand of choice for Amazon US shoppers looking for a new computer.If nothing else, this clear endorsement of Apple products by US consumers shows how much the company has returned to grab its slice of PC industry "lebensraum".
Apple computers in every stripe account for 12 of the online giant's top 20 computer sales this morning. (Amazon UK doesn't carry computers).
iBook leads the pack The iBook is the number one biggest computer-seller at Amazon as the back-to-school season begins in earnest, closely-pursued by the new 20-inch iMac. The 12.1-inch SuperDrive PowerBook is in third place.
Remaining list leaders, in order of preference are: fourth, the 14.1-inch iBook; fifth, 17-inch PowerBook; sixth, SuperDrive-equipped Mac mini; and seventh the Old-style 20-inch iMac.
Sony and Toshiba finally show up in eighth and ninth place, with a CD-RW/DVD Mac mini seizing tenth place.
Apple's heavy presence on the giant Amazon site reflects the new impact the company has on personal computing, thanks to the iPod, which keeps the brand in the public eye.
Apple to hit five per cent US share in 2006?
The news suggests Apple may see even more market growth in its current quarter, as its computers cease to be the oddballs of the home PC set. This should cast Microsoft protagonists into the same role that Apple defended during Cupertino's lean years.
Last week analysts at IDC and Gartner revealed that Apple had finally become one of the top five US PC makers in the third calendar quarter of 2005. Apple's growth absolutely outperfomed the industry average, with US PC shipments climbing 11 per cent to 17 million.
IDC claimed Apple to be the fifth place PC maker in the US, with 737,000 units shipped. Its market share climbed from 3.3 per cent to 4.3 per cent for an astonishing 44.6 per cent year-on-year growth.
Gartner declared Apple to be the fourth place PC maker with 744,000 units shipped for 4.2 per cent of the market.
Wearing shades in Cupertino
In tandem with the iPod, Apple's market momentum helped drive the company to deliver a new corporate record in its fourth quarter 2005, reporting the highest revenue and earnings in its history. Revenue hit $3.68 billion for a net profit of $430 million.
With recent new Mac announcements and the migration to Intel processors promising further speed and power enhancements, analysts remain optimistic for the company's future growth.
Apple senior executives must remain steady and avoid being blinded by the sweet sunlight of success.
The company will report its first quarter 2006 results on January 18.
That's enough quoting the exact articles... but here are more links to other discussions of the 6.6% market share.
Arstechnica Article referring to 6.6% market share
Still, all operating systems have vulnerabilities, including OS X. Like Microsoft, Apple issues a monthly set of security patches to plug the holes. The big difference is that actual exploits of Mac vulnerabilities have been extremely rare, and that suggests a lack of interest by attackers. A few years ago, OS X probably would have come under attack just for the challenge of it. But all the evidence suggests that these days, the ablest writers of viruses, spyware, and worms, are motivated more by profit than glory, and Windows, with 90%-plus of the market, is where the money is.
Bush2000: That about sums it up.
Hi, again, Bush. I just found this article ... a response to the Business Week (and Windows apologists, such as you) from MacDailyNews:
MacDailyNews Take: According to Apple, there are "close to 16 million Mac OS X users" in the world and there are still zero (0) viruses. Zero. According to CNET, the Windows Vista Beta was released "to about 10,000 testers" at the time the first Windows Vista virus arrived.Those who surf the Web using a Mac tend to be better educated and make more money than their PC-using counterparts, according to a report from Nielsen/NetRatings. - CNET News.
Using Wildstrom's "logic:" Virus writers are motivated by profit, so they attack those who surf the Web using Windows because they tend to be less educated and make less money than their Mac-using counterparts. If profit is the motivator, wouldn't it make more sense to try to steal from those with the most money? Or perhaps, it's too hard and they can't get into Mac OS X user's machines at all?
Using common sense, there should be a least one virus in the over 5 years since Mac OS X was released, shouldn't there? But, there is not one Mac OS X virus. Where is it? The reason why has so much more to do with inherent security than anything else, that to continue to try to equate "security via obscurity" (for an OS that, by the way, isn't "obscure") with the inherent security built into Mac OS X, is ridiculous. The New York Times' David Pogue once tried the Mac OS X "security via obscurity" myth on for size. It didn't fit. Pogue thought about it and quickly recanted. (Read Pogue's simple explanation why Mac OS X much more secure than Windows XP here.)
People who propagate the "Mac OS X is secure because it's obscure" myth are either not thinking the issue through completely or are Microsoft apologists. Apple Mac OS X is vastly better than Windows at protecting its users from malicious attacks. Mac OS X is so much better, in fact, that it's literally a joke to write lines like, "still, all operating systems have vulnerabilities, including OS X. Like Microsoft, Apple issues a monthly set of security patches to plug the holes." Those words suggest that Wildstrom thinks Mac OS X would be as prone to viruses, spyware, adware, etc. as Windows, if only it had "90%-plus of the market." (Windows doesn't have "90%-plus of the market," by the way.) Mac OS X would not be as vulnerable to viruses, worms, spyware, etc. as Windows if it had Windows' installed base. Not even close.
Windows was not designed for open networks like the Internet. Microsoft could never say no to backwards compatibility and now have an OS in the hands of millions of interconnected people that wasn't designed to be secure when interconnected. Microsoft has been promising better security for years with each successive Windows packaging change. If you think Windows Vista is going to magically fix the problems, we've got a nice bridge in Brooklyn for you on sale at eBay now.
Note to all of you "security via obscruity" types: please stop insulting Apple Mac OS X's (and NeXT's and decades of Unix's) brilliant operating system designers while simultaneously trying to cover for Microsoft's ineptness. The reason that Mac OS X users surf the Web with impunity is because of the secure way Mac OS X is designed, not because it's "obscure." What kind product that 16 million people use daily is "obscure"? Your argument is as flawed as Windows. 16 million people use Mac OS X daily and it's never had one single virus in over 5 years. Let's get serious. Mac OS X not secure because it's obscure, it's just better.
Now that REALLY sums it up.
In fact, it does such a good job that I am going to PING the Mac List to this thread again...
Click here to comment on the PINGed article!
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How Susceptible Is Your Operating System to Viruses?. . . I also wrote that Mac OS X and Linux are virus-free because they offer virus writers a much smaller “audience” than Windows -- a notion that’s been much repeated in the press, most recently last week’s BusinessWeek cover story. That, as it turns out, is a myth, no matter who repeats it. There’s a much bigger reason virus writers don’t like Mac OS X and Linux.
“Unix [which underlies Mac OS X] and Linux ARE more secure,” wrote one reader. “They have been developed, open-source style, by people who know exactly what they are doing. Unix and Linux have had at least 10 years of battling hackers to better themselves. This leads to an extremely secure environment.”
Many of you also pointed out simple design decisions that make Mac OS X and Linux much more secure than Windows XP. For example:
* Windows comes with five of its ports open; Mac OS X comes with all of them shut and locked. (Ports are back-door channels to the Internet: one for instant-messaging, one for Windows XP’s remote-control feature, and so on.) These ports are precisely what permitted viruses like Blaster to infiltrate millions of PC’s. Microsoft says that it won’t have an opportunity to close these ports until the next version of Windows, which is a couple of years away.
* When a program tries to install itself in Mac OS X or Linux, a dialog box interrupts your work and asks you permission for that installation -- in fact, requires your account password. Windows XP goes ahead and installs it, potentially without your awareness.
* Administrator accounts in Windows (and therefore viruses that exploit it) have access to all areas of the operating system. In Mac OS X, even an administrator can’t touch the files that drive the operating system itself. A Mac OS X virus (if there were such a thing) could theoretically wipe out all of your files, but wouldn’t be able to access anyone else’s stuff -- and couldn’t touch the operating system itself.
* No Macintosh e-mail program automatically runs scripts that come attached to incoming messages, as Microsoft Outlook does.
Evidently, I’m not the only columnist to have fallen for this old myth; see www.sunspot.net/technology/custom/pluggedin/bal-mac082803,0,1353478.column for another writer’s more technical apology. But the conclusion is clear: Linux and Mac OS X aren’t just more secure because fewer people use them. They’re also much harder to crack right out of the box.
Readers contend Mac's OS X is much tougher to crack than Windows
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