Re: Compter recommendations


On Tue, 08 Jul 2008 03:14:46 -0500, Ron Hunter <rphunter@xxxxxxxxxxx>
wrote:

Given that 'malware' is any program that does something you don't want
done, or causes problems in some way, NO COMPUTER, and NO OS, is immune.
Macs are saved by their own lack of marketshare. Those who want to
cause trouble want the broadest possible trouble distribution, not a
small percentage of the total.

In your first sentence, by that definition just about every program
out there is malware. You might want to change it slightly to say
that malware is a program that is *designed* to do something you don't
want done or causes problems in some way. I.e., the damage is
intentional.

Skipping to your last sentence, there are 2 types of people who want
to cause trouble. The "professionals" who use virus, trojans, worms,
rootkits, etc., to set up botnets for making money by sending spam are
the type that don't want to bother with limited marketshare. But
there's a whole other segment of hackers who are out for noteriety and
those would love to make an effective virus agains Macs or Linux. The
fact that they haven't succeeded as wildly well against Macs and Linux
as they have against Windows has nothing to do with marketshare but
instead, is a philosophical difference between OSX and Linux vs.
Windows.

In order for a virus to work, you have to have a hole (a bug in the OS
that allows malware to get in) and an exploit (code that makes use of
the hole to do something nefarious.)

No OS is perfect. But when a hole is discovered in Linux (or OSX)
there's usually a patch issued which closes the hole and does not
allow any exploits to use it anymore. If you are up to date with your
patches, chances are very high you won't get a virus using Linux or
MacOSX. This is especially true with an open source OS like Linux
because holes are usually discovered and patched before there's even a
bit of exploit code to take advantage of it.

On the other hand, Windows has a lot of known security holes both in
the OS and in other programs, like office, that run on it. Yes, some
holes in Windows are patched and closed when found, usually on patch
Tuesday and hopefully before a virus is in the wild that takes
advantage of it (a zero day virus). But the philosophical difference
is that with Windows, many known security holes are purposefully left
open because they also add some functionality that Microsoft doesn't
want to give up. So instead of closing the hole and not allowing any
exploit code to use it anymore, Windows has to rely on signature
detection of code snippets that use the open hole.

There are many viruses that can use the same hole, and more written
all the time because the hole is never closed. That's why the
signature database for virus scanning software grows larger everyday.
If Windows security holes were closed when found, as they are with
Linux and MacOSX, it wouldn't pay anyone (professional or amateur) to
bother writing a new virus that takes advantage of it.

And that's the real reason why you see tens of thousdands of different
viruses (or virii if you're a hacker) for Windows and relatively few
for MaxOSX or Linux. Because Windows is such an easy target with
known security holes that stay open while they are closed when found
in Linux or MacOSX.

The reason antivirus software even exists at all for Linux or MacOSX
is not because they are all that vulnerable to catching a virus but
because they can be a carrier and spread a virus to a Windows machine
through emails, file sharing, etc.

Steve
.

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