Apologizes for the long post, just got in.
In any case, both Windows and OS X are fairly secure OS's. True viruses are far less common then they were 5 years ago. The real concern these days are Trojans and Phishing.
The real concerns are identify theft, botnets and so on that actually make money for the hackers. That's the reason viruses and worms have been declining over the years and not to mention the OS are getting more secure. There are no incentives to write a virus to spread through networks nowadays.
"Viruses" are so nineties. It's now called malware. Get it straight you people.
I know you're being sarcastic but some people might not catch it. Malware refers to any type of software that is intentionally malicious toward the users including viruses, worms, torjans, rootkits and so on.
The biggest security threat to both Windows 7 and Mac OS X is the end-user.
Social engineering is the term here. Humans will always be the weakest link in any security solution.
Yes. The industry has just wrapped it all up into one term. Viruses have actually been less of the "problem" of recent times.
Due to lack of incentives of creating them. Botnets and identify theft are much more profitable.
Very good, we need guys like Miller to shake things up a bit and keep Apple on their toes as they push their market share forward. What we don't need are Apple apologists or zealots, that gets nothing done. Apple will appreciate what Miller has to offer too, it's free R&D, and the publicity from Miller's event won't cost them any sales as it's not necessarily negative, we all know that it's win win.
There's a difference between people intentionally holding back on holes, using them to create publicity and people who does find them and report them directly to the OS vendor. This guy is the former type, he's more concerned about winning contests with his exploits and publicity. The fact is, his exploits are nothing to worry about, you have to be actually stupid to get infected.
Keep in mind it was two years in a row this guy won for hacking OSX. The first year he came with two exploits and the first one worked so he won. The second exploit he didn't tell anyone about and a year later it was still unpatched and he used that to win again. So maybe apple patched it quickly once he told them about it but it doesn't change the fact that the exploit was out there for more than a year. The next contest begins again next week.
He also said that OSX was easier to hack than windows and that windows vista and 7 are more secure. Though he also said OSX is safer.
Most exploits these days will coming in the form of phising and social engineering. The operating system can't protect you from that.
There is also a trojan out there, the famous one attached to pirated copies of iwork. Now you say, "I don't pirate anything so I have nothing to worry about". Not true. Hackers don't have to necessarily hack OSX. Rather they hack the servers where you download software from and attach their malware to that. Looks legit to everyone, after all you've been using that software for years, and then one day you are infected and don't even know it.
Have you read the rules for the contest? Nobody won the original contest, most modern OS was so hard to break into, they have to bend the rules and allow the "hackers" to use exploits that requires users to actually infect themselves and get in. Users will always be the weakest link in security issues, they are not the fault of the OS but the users. OS companies need to focus more on anti-social engineering security solutions, MS has done that with the UAC but the UAC has been broken in, MS has fixed it but they need to focus more on making sure it never happen again.
OS X isn't easier to hack than Windows 7. Both OS is secure enough on its own. As long as the users are educated, both OS is almost impossible to break in.
Yeah… Well that’s quite a load of…
. Here are few:
Virus (PoC): OSX/Inqtana.A
Trojan-Downloader: OSX/Jahlev.A
Backdoor: OSX/iWorkServ.A
Worm: OSX/Tored.A
And still many Mac users do essentially just that. There is no such thing as an immune OS.
I switched to the Mac because it was the better platform. And it still is the better platform for many reasons. But Windows 7 is ahead of OS X in security features. Some people just need to get over it.
And even if some Windows virus would not effect you, you might be spreading the crap around. There’s just no good excuse not to use anti-virus.
These holes are about PDFs this time and those 20 are from Preview. You can read a bit more from
Intego’s blog.
They are not viruses, they are all trojans that you HAVE to INSTALL yourselves. By giving permission to OSX to install that pirated copy, you are intentionally infecting the OS yourself, which is your fault, not anybody else.
Even the perfect OS in the entire universe will not be safe from social engineering, there's no way to prevent people to stop installing crap.
Some people are being rather silly.
Any computer CAN get a virus.
It's harder to get a virus on Mac/Linux because:
a) There used to be not as much interest
b) It's harder to exploit due to the OS being based around Unix. The code is different, it's a lot harder to code an exploit albeit be it a virus, worm or trojan etc
c) All the people coding stuff that's got an .exe extension won't affect Macs, 'cos Macs won't run anything with an .exe extension. Even if it is a virus it won't affect the computer.
I'm no expert but I'm lead to believe that a lot of the exploits for Mac/Linux would have to be through code injection which affect the RAM, and operating of software etc?
There is anti virus software for Mac, and your Mac does have a Firewall - better safe than sorry, right?
If you are connected to a router you shouldn't have to worry too much as most new models have a built in firewall.
I could go on, here!
Modern computers (Vista+, OS X, any UNIX OS, *nix) do not get viruses. It's the users that infect their computers. Past generations of OS like XP was so horrible that you could put them in an infected network and it'll automatically get infected, due to the fact that everything was running under admin account without any user permission to allow the stuff to be run. Vista, W7 and OS X is extremely hard to infect due to this specific reason.
If somebody wrote some code, give it to one user and the user installs it and as the result, the user got infected. The virus still has no permission to actually run itself, it's harder to make copy of itself and spread it to another computer in the network without that specific computer owner allowing it. That code still can't infect anybody else because the user actually have to send it to somebody else, and that person has to install it and run it. Far different in the past, when the worms can infect by just hitting the port of a computer and install itself.
For now. But as our platform is getting more popular, it is not only getting more attention from the potential users....
Even if OS X has 90% of the market share, nothing will change. It's almost impossible to spread viruses in OS that does not explicitly allow any file to run as root/admin like XP did.
That's my favorite. Based off of UNIX and IS UNIX are two different things. OSX is still a closed system and when outside people point out its shortcomings Apple should do what MS has been doing lately and jumping on it, not ignoring it.
OSX is UNIX certified, it's not based off it.
Not surprised, when OSX becomes more relevant it'll become just like Windows, It has nothing to do with Macs being more secure, thats just BS.. I love OSX but being a computer enthusiast I know the reason the OSX do not have many viruses or spyware is due to the fact that not many people use it..
A computer enthusiast is not the same thing as computer expert.
Look at the difference between Vista/W7 and XP. It's much harder to infect the former than latter, for the same reason it's much harder to infect OS X ever since its inception. Users are much more involved in Vista/W7 in terms of installing applications and allowing applications to run. Far different from Xp where everything was running with admin account and allowed to install/run other stuff without the user's permission.
