[dayglored]

> ...hacker disinterest in Mac OS X has more to do with numbers, as in market share, than in what protective measure Apple adds to the OS. "It's harder to write exploits for Windows than the Mac," Miller said, "but all you see are Windows exploits. That's because if [the hacker] can hit 90% of the machines out there, that's all he's gonna do. It's not worth him nearly doubling his work just to get that last 10%." This is what I have maintained all along. The same goes for all the Linux variations as well. I'm loving my new Windows 7 ...

I'm glad you like Win7. I like it too.

Now think for a minute. There are 35,000,000+ Macs on the internet running OS-X. Virtually ALL of them are being operated by non-techies, running with full admin privilege. Virtually NONE of them have any 3rd-party anti-virus protection whatsoever.

A useful botnet is 30,000 machines. A big botnet is 100,000 machines.

If a virus-writer could write a successful virus for OS-X, they could immediately have A THOUSAND BOTNETS that are useful, or maybe 300 BIG botnets.

And no competition from other virus writers! Wow, what a great opportunity -- millions of machines wide open and no competition!

Yet there is NOT A SINGLE SUCH VIRUS in the wild. The only exploits for Macs are user-operated trojans that are human-engineered for the operator to spread their legs.

The reason is that OS-X is, at its core, Unix, which is inherently much more secure than Windows, even Win7, which is still the NT codebase. Security by design, not by marketshare. DESIGN. Unix was done right. Windows could have been, but wasn't. Someday it will, but that's not today.

Your argument just doesn't hold water -- it's the same old FUD about marketshare. Sorry, it's an old, discredited argument.

[OpeEdMunkey]

Your argument just doesn't hold water -- it's the same old FUD about marketshare. Sorry, it's an old, discredited argument.

I'm not so sure. Way back in the days of system 6 (Go MultiFinder!) and 7 there were plenty of Mac viruses. I suspect that had more to do with the availability of the Macs to college geeks rather than MacOS not being based on UNIX.

Now, with Windows as the dominant machine, why bother to write Mac or Linux viruses? It's harder and there isn't much of a payoff.

[chris_bdba]

You are right. And from what I read the hacks in created very small problems that unless you were really lookign for them most people would never notice. No missing files, not crashed computer, etc...Very predicable tht they will run out the same stories over and over right before a new windows OS appears? Is propaganda that easy to pass around?