OSX = No Viruses or Hacks?

M

MacNEO

Dirty Mac Monkey
I was reading an article in a new Mac magazine and have read several times that Macs are fairly hard to hack and you can't get viruses. I am a switcher since this summer and love my iBook to death! I however don't know much about the security structure of them (Macs in general). I know Windows comes with all of its ports open and there are all sorts of viruses and security holes to say the least. Mac OS9 was not hackable is this correct? How is this so? Were the ports built in such a way that they could not be compromised? Having said this OSX is different from OS9. I have read that OSX only opens ports it needs. The ports that are open aren't sercurity problems? There is now virus protection for OSX too. Am I correct to say that possible viruses would be from e-mail attatchments, similar to PC viruses? I hope this makes sense I just don't know enough to explain it any better. Just things I am curious about...
 
First, there are no viruses for OS X, yet.
OS X comes with ports closed.
Anything can be hacked, if someone wants to.
Mac OS X has a built in Firewall you can use to protect from the outside. It's in the Sharing PreferencePane
You can completely control the ports on your machine, very easily.
 
Well, it's probably bound, to sooner or later, but even so, will only be a fraction of a percentage of what viruses there are for PC's.
 
And just for clarification, Windows XP installs with 5 ports open. One of these is the nightmarish "Remote Procedure Call" port.
 
I've never had a virus and i've been on a mac since system 6. Having said that, and as Harvey said, some apps are susceptible. I figure M$ products would be the worst, cos of word macro viruses and stuff, though i've never had one myself, and am depressingly tied to office in order to be compatible with my university.

ora
 
I think it's important to see that we're not 'safe' here on Mac OS X. Sure, there are no viri right now (I hope) - and the security issues have been handled 'okay' by Apple.

However, there is no such thing as a safe operating system. (Okay, if you unplug from the 'net, the probability of a hacker's access to your computer goes near zero...) And there are bugs to be found in several parts of Mac OS X that can/could eventually lead to exploits. Happened with OpenSSL software, with Sendmail (not being used any longer by default in 10.3, I believe) named and others. But these issues are usually handled quite well by Apple.

It is obvious that Microsoft has more problems with security issues and viri. Much more. Whether that's due to the fact that Windows is installed on ~95% of all connected desktop computers or not doesn't matter. It's a fact. (And doesn't reduce the danger in any way...)
But feeling safe is what brings one of the biggest dangers: Ignorance. The actually worst security issue in Windows is the users who click on stuff in E-Mails and keep their Windows installations outdated.

I would really like to hear a petition to forbid using Windows pre 2000 because of 'international interest of security'. ;-)
 
fryke said:
I would really like to hear a petition to forbid using Windows pre 2000 because of 'international interest of security'. ;-)
Click to expand...

That ignores one thing, though. The fact that most of the serious virus threats of the last 12 months have only applied to Windows 2000 and XP. Take for example Blaster and Welchia. Most of the remaining viruses are just as effective on Windows 2000 and XP as on any other version (such as Mimail or the Paypal hoax virus).

By encouraging more people to upgrade to the latest version of Windows, you aren't automatically making their computers more secure at all. All you're doing is encouraging them to spend money on something that really won't represent any improvement.
 
The reason Microsoft or Apple encourages people to upgrade their machines to the latest system isn't for security, it's for money, the bottom line.
 
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