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To: detective; Swordmaker

I heard she had a mac...looks like there are some serious security issues on it for them to remotely install malware! Or installed by just clicking on a link in an email.


38 posted on 10/27/2014 4:05:21 PM PDT by for-q-clinton (If at first you don't succeed keep on sucking until you do succeed)
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To: for-q-clinton; Swordmaker
I heard she had a mac...looks like there are some serious security issues on it for them to remotely install malware! Or installed by just clicking on a link in an email.

Actually, Sharyl was running Windows on that Mac. That’s what I heard.

 photo win_10.jpg

41 posted on 10/27/2014 4:32:17 PM PDT by Bronzewound (Lost Hope & Loose Change)
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To: for-q-clinton

Um, no. She had Windows machines but *now* bought a Mac to replace them.


52 posted on 10/27/2014 8:14:38 PM PDT by Spktyr (Overwhelmingly superior firepower and the willingness to use it is the only proven peace solution.)
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To: for-q-clinton
I heard she had a mac...looks like there are some serious security issues on it for them to remotely install malware! Or installed by just clicking on a link in an email.

Nice try, fro-q-Clinton, but her own statements seem to deny that.

"The breach was accomplished through an “otherwise innocuous e-mail” that Attkisson says she got in February 2012, then twice “redone” and “refreshed” through a satellite hookup and a Wi-Fi connection at a Ritz-Carlton hotel."

Since you don't use a Mac you don't know much about some of the reasons why this isn't possible. Emails on a Mac have never been intimately connected with the Operating System as they were in Windows. Attachments cannot be run from an email. It would have to be deliberately downloaded by the user to the downloads folder at which point the OS vets it for known trojan malware. From there, another deliberate act by the user is required to either mount a virtual drive for installation, or run an installer, bot actions require an administrator's user name and password. If it modifies ANYTHING in the user accessible portion of operating system, the user must again enter the admin's name and password. But to hide something "deep in the operating system" requires a UNIX Super User's access, which is not even activated on a Mac as shipped!

No one has found a way to install malware on a Mac without the active participation of a user with an administrator password. Finally, she refers to other Microsoft applications such as Skype. . . and that leads me to believe her laptop is a Windows computer.

I heard she had a mac...looks like there are some serious security issues on it for them to remotely install malware! Or installed by just clicking on a link in an email.

Nice try, fro-q-Clinton, but her own statements seem to deny that.

"The breach was accomplished through an “otherwise innocuous e-mail” that Attkisson says she got in February 2012, then twice “redone” and “refreshed” through a satellite hookup and a Wi-Fi connection at a Ritz-Carlton hotel."

Since you don't use a Mac you don't know much about some of the reasons why this isn't possible. Emails on a Mac have never been intimately connected with the Operating System as they were in Windows. Attachments cannot be run from an email. It would have to be deliberately downloaded by the user to the downloads folder at which point the OS vets it for known trojan malware. From there, another deliberate act by the user is required to either mount a virtual drive for installation, or run an installer, bot actions require an administrator's user name and password. If it modifies ANYTHING in the user accessible portion of operating system, the user must again enter the admin's name and password. But to hide something "deep in the operating system" requires a UNIX Super User's access, which is not even activated on a Mac as shipped!

No one has found a way to install malware on a Mac without the active participation of a user with an administrator password. Finally, she refers to other Microsoft applications such as Skype. . . and that leads me to believe her laptop is a Windows computer.

Now, that being said, there IS a way to sneak any documents—for later discovery when the time is "convenient" to be found—onto anyone's computer, Windows, LINUX, or Mac, who is not paying attention to their email in this day and age. If one does not toss everything on a regular basis, like most of us, junk builds up. All of us get stuff with graphics in it that seem innocuous such as that cute cat photo you thought came from your Aunt Ginny. . . or those really cool pictures of your high school classmates at the last reunion someone sent you. Or somebody found a pic of you in that 1954 Hudson hornet, your first car you owned. You didn't download them, or maybe you did, but you kept the emails, knowing you could find them again. In any case, the photos attachments are in your email databases.

Buried inside those graphic files are As I said, nice try at FUD. . . but no banana. --------------

Now, that being said, there IS a way to sneak any documents—for later discovery when the time is "convenient" to be found—onto anyone's computer, Windows, LINUX, or Mac, who is not paying attention to their email in this day and age. If one does not toss everything on a regular basis, like most of us, junk builds up. All of us get stuff with graphics in it that seem innocuous such as that cute cat photo you thought came from your Aunt Ginny. . . or those really cool pictures of your high school classmates at the last reunion someone sent you. Or somebody found a pic of you in that 1954 Hudson hornet, your first car you owned. You didn't download them, or maybe you did, but you kept the emails, knowing you could find them again. In any case, the photos attachments are in your email databases.

Buried inside those graphic files are steganographic additions hidden within the picture. That steganographic addition can contain anything the person wants, say a "TOP SECRET" or "CLASSIFIED" CIA file, and not affect the image quality or even the file size. Later, it can be "found" by someone who knows exactly where to look.

Then there are the regular emails that come in with the 70k Zip attachments we all ignore. You know, the ones that claim to contain the secret formula for losing weight, or those great nude photos of Jennifer Anniston, that are only 70k in size, so no one bothers to open them, figuring they can't be safe. . . and eventually we just ignore them, skipping over them. A lot just pile up, unopened, undeleted. . . but STILL in the email database "deep in the operating system" where who knows where they'll eventually be found. . . and what is really hidden in them. We Mac users have long assumed they carry Windows malware, but now I wonder.

So, unless you are very diligent and delete everything, they could put anything on your computer that while not a malware APP, it could be a malicious stealthy dirty bomb document!

So many of my clients have literally thousands of unread emails in their inboxes like this. . . and read emails they're keeping just because. I'm guilty too.

I have been going through my email and deleting everything I know is not securely safe, unneeded, suspicious, junk I've ignored, etc.

53 posted on 10/27/2014 8:53:24 PM PDT by Swordmaker (This tag line is a Microsoft insult free zone... but if the insults to Mac users continue...)
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