What I've seen asked for consistently is "in the wild" and "self-propagating," what Windows has had thousands of times over.
Nobody denies that *a* specific computer can be hacked given enough time, resources and effort. Nobody denies idiots purposely install pirated software acquired through P2P (ignoring the OS's protections) only to find out that it's a trojan. Of course given the large number of Macs out there, even those instances are limited. Sure, there have been viruses and worms. But those are made by Mac antivirus-companies looking for business, and they never succeed in the wild due to propagation difficulties on the system.
What I'd also like to know is where the Mac botnets are. There are 50 million of them out there, mostly unprotected. Getting a tenth of them would make for a rather big botnet. And getting a tenth of a population is doable given poor-enough security. SQL Slammer infected 90% of all vulnerable systems (75,000 systems) in under ten minutes. The only thing that slowed it down was that it crashed the networks under its load.
So if Windows is so vulnerable why have I never been attacked by one of these self-propogating viruses that require no user interaction? The way you describe it it sounds like I’m probably getting infected right now.
I mean if windows was so vulnerable I’m bound to have had at least one attack on my many machines that I leave online all day long or one of my work machines. But yet I’ve had none.
SQL Slammer...was that a Windows vulnerability or SQL vulnerability? Last I checked it was an application. So I can install an application on a Mac that could be exploited and then you’d say the Mac wasn’t exploited it was the application.
So please try again.
You and I are on the same page, we don’t disagree.