Re: Attention Windows Users

In article <11rjp222g2kfv5d@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>, Peter Duniho
<NpOeStPeAdM@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

> > [...] Still holding at ZERO viruses and spyware.
>
> But not zero vulnerabilities. There just haven't been any hackers who can
> be bothered to attack an OS hardly anyone uses.

Of course; no system is totally bulletproof. But they're patched
quickly when they're discovered, in large part because the core OS --
FreeBSD -- is open-source, and independent software developers can
discover vulnerabilities and address them quickly. That's a big reason
none of the exploits has been attacked. With Windows, we're entirely
at the mercy of waiting for Microsoft's security team to get around to
fixing things. You can see how well that's working.

In any case, there's much, much more to it than obscurity. (And many,
many millions of machines doesn't seem to me to be "hardly anyone.")
Besides, you can't really think nobody is trying to penetrate it.
After all, what hacker wouldn't want to be the one to create the
*first* Mac OS X virus ever, versus the 250th one this week?

Here's one example of why it's so difficult to infect a Mac:
Applications run in user space, not system space. Programs *cannot*
install without the user manually authenticating with their password,
and the core OS can't be touched at all, unless the root user is logged
in. (And that account is disabled by default, because it's not needed
in virtually every installation.)

What difference does it make? Well, for example, the recent Sony
rootkit fiasco could *not* have happened on the Mac OS, because their
installer wouldn't have been able to overwrite the CD driver as it did
with the Windows version. (It did this even if you told it *not* to
install, incidentally.)

That's the difference with a system that was designed as a multi-user
system from the ground up, as UNIX was. And that's a big reason why
Apple chose to use it as the foundation for their new OS, when they
released a total rewrite four years ago.

Even if you're the only user on your system, these barriers the OS puts
up also work to protect you from rogue software.


Just for the sake of argument, I did a brief Google search. Here's an
article from a Windows site, praising how much better the Mac OS's
security is. Enjoy:
http://www.winsupersite.com/showcase/winvista_beta1_vs_tiger_02.asp

--
Garner R. Miller
ATP/CFII/MEI
Clifton Park, NY =USA=
http://www.garnermiller.com/
.

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