There have been a few articles in the press lately about Mac Viruses. They've mostly been poorly written but I haven't torn them apart yet. Instead Daring Fireball beat me to it with Good Journalism.
The one bit of FUD that annoys me is that intel chips will make macs as vulnerables as PCs. That's completely untrue. Viruses use weaknesses in software to spread, that's applications and operating systems. Windows is vulnerable because of Windows, not because of Intel chips. Macs are safer because of OS X. They're not invulnerable but OS X is much more solid than Windows.
I was a little disappointed to see that Apple isn't quite as speedy as they should be in releasing fixes for found security holes. But you do have to realize that it seems fewer than 10 people have ever been affected by Mac viruses (I am not sure of that, but it seems right) and millions have been affected by Windows viruses. Even saying that Windows has the larger market, it's only maybe 30x bigger, that's not enough to explain the discrepancy.
4 comments:
I'm not even commenting on which operating system is better or safer, but don't you think there is a disproportionate amount of people writing on the windows platform, just because it is the most popular. I was going to write a virus, why would I bother with the Mac, The chances of it spreading are greatly reduced by the lack of hosts and the large number of other OS it will hit, but not be able to run on. Kind of like those sterile flies they release into the wild to reduce the fly population. What was the name of our 10th grade biology teacher anyway?
I meant to type "If I was going to write a virus", not "I was going to write a virus". No need to call Homeland security.
Sure, if you want to affect the most people you write for Windows. On the other hand, you might write based on what platform you have, if 3% have Macs I'd expect 3% of the viruses to be for Macs. The other problem with your theory is that if you follow it for all software, there would be no Mac software because every developer would write for the larger market. it's not true for other software so why would it be true for viruses?
Usually when people offer this argument it's avoiding the fact that the OS X system is more secure. There's always user accounts, you don't run as root, the root account is disabled by default, there was never crap like running arbitrary ActiveX controls in the browser, etc.
Is it perfect or invulnerable? Not at all, but I'm far far safer on a Mac than I am on Windows.
It was Dr. Sawyer.
One more thing I forgot. If I wanted to make a name for myself writing viruses, I'd probably choose the mac platform. I would have the opportunity to write the first widespread virus on a platform. Anyone can (and many have) write a virus for Windows, what's the fun in that?
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