Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
I hope not. My primary reason in switching with a mac was no viruses and easy to use interface.

These vulnerabilities are usually only relevant for breaking in to or disrupting servers. On a normal Mac workstation, there is a firewall protecting you. For viruses, breaking in is only half the battle. They also have to do something meaningful. I don't expect we will have the same problems as Windows if market share reaches 90%. Even Windows will probably get better eventually. Their legacy stuff is usually the culprit for these viruses. If there are major vulnerabilities (like on windows), Apple is more likely to shift to a new technology then Microsoft who likes to continues to put patches on a poorly designed technology because they don't want to support two products. Apple would just drop the bad technology and support the new one. Look at Flash for example. They don't want to support bad technology so they omit it from the iPad. That forces the industry to switch from it instead of letting it drag on forever.
 
Its not. You're so in love with Apple that you refuse to see any potential need to protect yourself or even comprehend the potential flaws. Others however are not.

Or perhaps your so alarmist that you want to give the illusion of FUD when there is really no tangible proof of such. What am I going to protect myself from? Script kiddies? Ok. I'll stay away from Warez and not give my password to every application that asks for it. Done. What are these potentials you speak of? Is a threat tangible? Where is it? Please direct me to a credible hacker who is planning to takeover all of my mac boxes remotely.
 
Actually that's not correct. What happens is that box pops up and sits in the corner reminding you it needs a reboot after the updates. If you don't click it nothing happens. You have to actaully click reboot. The other option is you can postpone that message for a period of time so it stop bugging you about the reboot.
It doesn't reboot on it's own.

updates are released every tuesday. It's a good thing that issues are found and fixed so quickly.


It's a blatant dialog box that says "Windows will restart your computer in 15 minutes". And it did.
 
Apple does not do it all for you. Apple gives your a small amount of GUI based configuration. We use IPFW here to throttle bandwidth and its all command line driven.

For the ports that are used for exploits of safari and safari related services the type of traffic that can pass through is preconfigured by the team that produces ipfw and then further modified by apple for its needs.

Edit: This is relevent if ipfw is enabled which it is not by default.

Second Edit: I was double wrong, exploitation using these methods are not uncommon in the wild. But, it is rare in the wild in OS X because the impact of such exploitation in Mac OS X is limited by the low incidence rate of privilege escalation exploits and user space security mitigations that prevent keyloggers and other malware from logging security sensitive passwords, such as from authentication prompts or website logins, without privilege escalation. BTW, user interaction is required to hack a Mac via a crossover cable as the user has to allow "Internet Sharing" in System Preferences. Man-in-the-middle attacks facilitate these methods on wireless networks. Navigating to a malicious website facilitates these methods across the web.
 
Last edited:
Why are there still people here stating Windows has better security features than OS X? This is truly not the case.

A house in the worst neighborhood (Windows) with more locks on the doors and bars on the windows, I suppose, has better "security" than some of my friends who live in the suburbs (Mac) and always have their doors unlocked. Reality is, the house in the worst neighborhood still gets attacked far more often

It is the case. Read up on the security technologies behind both and you'll see that 7 is more secure than OSX. Only with snow leopard did apple start building in these technologies, but not completely. ASLR is still have half assed implementation.

Also when people say 7 is more secure than OSX they are referring to the hacker in this article that said 7 is more secure. Though he also said OSX was safer. Which works with your analogy.

Enough with the nonsense. I'm betting NUMEROUS MR readers visit sites they wouldn't admit to and STILL haven't caught anything.

I visit said sites and I will admit to it, in any flavor of windows, and still never had a virus.

Trojans are a problem, but on Mac, they still require an admin username and password to be entered before installing. On Windows 7ista, a simple "Allow" will install it.

Same thing. Both require authorization from the user.
 
I dunno. Every time someone even says the word "virus" all the Mac fans jump out and say things like "Not for us! There are no viruses for the Mac!" (Myself included.) For the last 10 years, it's been the same smug, condescending battle cry. "No viruses! Not here! Not us!"

You don't think that the first guy to create an actual, self-replicating virus on OS X, the first guy to prove them all wrong, the first guy to stick it in everyone's face, wouldn't become as famous as Steve Jobs and Linus Torvalds themselves?

You don't think that somewhere out there is a hacker who wants to make a name for himself?

That's why I don't buy "security by obscurity".

I agree wholeheartedly. Plus, the iTunes music store operation runs on Mac OS. Millions of credit card numbers are the prize if someone can hack into those servers. In addition to the egg on the face for Apple, I'd assume that would be a huuuuge incentive for someone to try, no? I've never said that Macs are secure. I think that's impossible for any OS. I'll take the one that's less targeted though.

My Windows machine sat online for 24 hours and got a virus just sitting there. My Mac is online 24 hours a day for a year and has never gotten a single one. Biggest threat to OS X is weak passwords. Like any UNIX based OS, once someone gets an admin password, they pretty much own the machine.
 
Mac OS X isn't perfect, so i'm sure people will continue to find "holes" in it. as long as apple continues to fix those holes, OS X will continue to be great
 
Mac OS X isn't perfect, so i'm sure people will continue to find "holes" in it. as long as apple continues to fix those holes, OS X will continue to be great

Pretty damn much but some people are so damn blind that Apple could do no wrong to them.

Me an alarmist? I'm in IT, I work with Infrastructure of course I see this stuff happen every damn day. You can be as blind and naive as you want but the threats are out there. Its like being promiscuous without protection. One day your going to wake up and your junks going to fall off.
 
It's a blatant dialog box that says "Windows will restart your computer in 15 minutes". And it did.

That's not what it says at all. It doesn't auto restart. It lets you postpone the reminder message. You aren't stopping a restart. Though if you click the button it will restart.
I have win7 on 4 computers here. I am aware of the dialog box. I've left it up all day long with no restart.
 
It is the case. Read up on the security technologies behind both and you'll see that 7 is more secure than OSX. Only with snow leopard did apple start building in these technologies, but not completely. ASLR is still have half assed implementation.

Also when people say 7 is more secure than OSX they are referring to the hacker in this article that said 7 is more secure. Though he also said OSX was safer. Which works with your analogy.



I visit said sites and I will admit to it, in any flavor of windows, and still never had a virus.



Same thing. Both require authorization from the user.

I guess I should have said safer, because I do stand by that. And, while I believe you may have been lucky at said sites, I've fixed an almost uncountable amount of Windows boxes due to that issue.

As I said to people in my Java course, you cannot judge the lack of Windows viruses by them (or some people here) because we're talking about people who are aware of the issue and know how to protect themselves.

The likelihood of a novice user on Mac getting even a trojan is limited (but not zero), whereas the majority of novice users on Windows get infected regularly.
 
The likelihood of a novice user on Mac getting even a trojan is limited (but not zero), whereas the majority of novice users on Windows get infected regularly.

This is when the numbers come in. I believe if more was out there you'd see more Mac users in trouble because of the rights most users have. Most Mac users just blindly type the name and password in when the dialog comes up.
 
Same thing. Both require authorization from the user.

User Account Control without a password could be easily defeated. By default Windows UAC has no password. OSX authorization require password by default.
 
...Every OS X security update fixes at least that many...

Exactly. Every os x security update fixes a lot of these. That means, before the update, there were security vulnerabilities. Think of all the security updates that apple released just for 10.5 in its lifetime. Before each of those updates, those were vulnerability that were "in the wild". You think you're safe just because you don't know.
 
It is the case. Read up on the security technologies behind both and you'll see that 7 is more secure than OSX. Only with snow leopard did apple start building in these technologies, but not completely. ASLR is still have half assed implementation.

Also when people say 7 is more secure than OSX they are referring to the hacker in this article that said 7 is more secure. Though he also said OSX was safer. Which works with your analogy.

People on this board continue to not remotely understand the difference between "security" and "safety".

Mac OS X isn't perfect, so i'm sure people will continue to find "holes" in it. as long as apple continues to fix those holes, OS X will continue to be great

The problem is that Apple has been quite slow to patch holes. Example? Java vulnerability that took them months to patch.

I said the proof is on the net by researching miller's exploits. Quit being lazy!

When I make claims, I expect to have to back them up via links/proof. Try it sometime. Yeah, I found it. It just amazes me that people make claims and can't post a simple friggin' link.

Pretty damn much but some people are so damn blind that Apple could do no wrong to them.

Me an alarmist? I'm in IT, I work with Infrastructure of course I see this stuff happen every damn day. You can be as blind and naive as you want but the threats are out there. Its like being promiscuous without protection. One day your going to wake up and your junks going to fall off.

This is the real problem with OS X: it's fanbase. It's okay to love the OS/hardware. I do.

But as someone who loves the products, I expect Apple to be responsive and work on improving security, not just be complacent with the lack of attacks.

Apple fanboys should be rabidly pestering Apple to make it more secure, not bragging about how secure their OS, and how much they have nothing to worry about. It's like standing in a forest with camo on and yelling "shoot me". Sure, they probably won't hit you. Probably.
 
This is when the numbers come in. I believe if more was out there you'd see more Mac users in trouble because of the rights most users have. Most Mac users just blindly type the name and password in when the dialog comes up.

Possibly, but I still believe that Android is a great case for blowing the obscurity myth out the window. Malware writers went for the unprotected, unguarded (Android) store with a much lower market share, rather than trying for the iPhone, which has a much larger market share to attack.
 
The likelihood of a novice user on Mac getting even a trojan is limited (but not zero), whereas the majority of novice users on Windows get infected regularly.

The likelihood of a novice user on a Mac getting a trojan is zero because the recent most trojans are blocked by SL's anti malware , and as far as we now there are no new iterations of the payload, nor any new threats.

But for every leopard et al...yeah...
 
Possibly, but I still believe that Android is a great case for blowing the obscurity myth out the window. Malware writers went for the unprotected, unguarded (Android) store with a much lower market share, rather than trying for the iPhone, which has a much larger market share to attack.

The reason for this is because Android's reach. It spans pretty far when you look at potential. Multiple carriers, multiple manufacturers, multiple markets, etc. You are right the straight up numbers aren't in place yet, HOWEVER, its span and potential are.

I think its just a different way of looking at though, I am not discounting what you are saying.
 
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.