Posted on 05/28/2005 8:24:15 PM PDT by quidnunc
A Seminole technology security expert is surprised by reaction to his post of frustration with Windows and Intel.
Winn Schwartau switched his office from PCs to Macintosh computers, a seemingly simple move that created an overwhelming reaction in the online world.
Schwartau is no mere computer user. He's a nationally known technology security expert from Seminole, so when he wrote in his online blog that he was tired of unreliable technology and fending off virus and spyware threats to his office PC he triggered a torrent of attention.
"I just didn't know this was going to be controversial," Schwartau said.
In a column titled "Mad as Hell," posted Monday at the Network World Web site and his blog (securityawareness.blogspot.com) on Wednesday, Schwartau declared that systems using Microsoft's Windows software and Intel processors are "a threat to the national economic security of any organization or nation-state that relies (upon) it."
The Macintosh community, always on the lookout for good news about Apple Computer and its products, started a flood of reaction. Schwartau's blog tracked 9,000 visitors Wednesday, 40,000 Thursday and 12,000 by midafternoon Friday. In a month, it usually gets 4,000 visitors.
According to Greg Hoffman, chief marketing officer for Schwartau's Security Awareness Co., responses were running 10-1 in favor of and praising the switch, which occurred last month.
-snip-
(Excerpt) Read more at sptimes.com ...
Here is a challenge that ought to garner some attention and answer your question.
The reason the "dark side resources" are not targeting the Mac is they ahve learned that it is a waste of time. The number of OS X viruses in the wild, as far as I know is ZERO.
Some theoretical exploits have been described, but none of them has any practical application becasue they have no means to replicate and spread.
If the virus writers and hackers devoted all their time to writing viruses for the Mac, the result would be no more viruses for either platform.
That is very interesting. I'll bet they get some takers.
If you've been exposed to unix, you've been exposed to the mac.
My first and only virus infection was on a Mac Classic at work (back when viruses were spread via floppies--someone elses of course. I suffered for a year with random reboots on Powermac until the IT guys finally replaced the motherboard. Ah the memories...
Thanks for the link. Great project.
DEC '84 to '96, then the old heave-ho. ... still a little bitter about that...
k.
heh heh heh
Stupid question: What about all the MS software?
I got an ibook and would never go back. I'm already plotting my acquisition of a nice,shiny powerbook with all the trimmings!
The below was written in response to one of the typical "market share" responses. The claim is weak, as demonstrated by the following.
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.
Buzzzz! Wrong!
John R uses Linux to drive FR.
Just an aside but the first personal computer virus I ever experienced was in 1981 with (the originally named) Apple Viruses 1, 2, and 3. These are generally recognized as the first personal computer viruses and predate the release of the IBM PC.
Later on I recall a very nasty trojan that was introduced via a Hypercard stack that ate up the Mac community for a couple of months.
No dog in this fight, just a bit of computer history.
Home business, that's fine and dandy... I can run a home business with a spiral notebook and a Ti Calculator...
If I wanna run a large business, I'll stick with PC's and The Servers that server them.
The way AMBers talk about Wintel boxes, how could any Wintel people know to switch to Mac? I mean, don't Wintel boxes crash every time just trying to boot and if they do boot they instantly get a virus and crash??
This is just more anti-Microsoft, anti-capitalist, communist propaganda.
"Home business, that's fine and dandy... I can run a home business with a spiral notebook and a Ti Calculator...
If I wanna run a large business, I'll stick with PC's and The Servers that server them."
What's so great about this statement is that the overwhelming majority of servers aren't Wintel machines but Unix boxes. MS's server solutions (NT) are limited because they can address 4 processors. Meanwhile HP-UX, Solaris and even Linux can run servers with nearly unlimited processors. Meaning, your precious Windows is not even close to being the best server software just like Windows XP isn't even close to being the desktop best.
Apples servers and RAID solutions can run any business of any size and work in a mixed Unix/Linux/MS/OS X environment. MS's server solutions cannot make the same claim. Also Windows is the only major operating system not operating on a Unix architecture at its base. Hence it's huge incompatibility issues.
Have a good one.
There's no disputing that Windows has long suffered from a distinct lack of being secure out-of-the box and this fact has caused serious problems amongst average users.
But if you're a "technology security expert" and are incapable of taking the very simple steps to secure your Windows box then let's call a spade a spade: you're not an "technology security expert".
Winn's just one of those guys who saw someone use a DOS prompt once and now thinks he knows more about computers than his intelligence and experience is actually capable of grasping.
I'd certainly never hire the guy because he obviously doesn't know what he's doing.
Not that I have any interest in getting involved in your argument but the current MS Servers support 128-way SMP in 64-way partitions addressable to 1 Terabyte of RAM.
I just bought a mini mac and it came with Panther loaded and a Tiger disc in the box to install.
If I install Tiger will it erase anything I have on Panther?
Bigmack
"Unfortunately, most servers, and yes, even Free Republic, are Windows user ...
Buzzzz! Wrong!
John R uses Linux to drive FR."
It has the same effect on Mac users as Windows.
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