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How can one make Mac fanboys happy?
One of our editors yesterday wrote a story on OS X malware threats. As security vendor McAfee points out, there has been an amazing lack of malware for the platform, eventhough the software is suffering from its fair share of vulnerabilities.
You'd figure that the self-regulated army of Mac fanboys would be glad. But the majority of the comments zooms in the assertion that OS X "isn't inherently more secure" than other operating systems and vehemently disagrees.
Questioning the infallibility of OS X is like waving a red flag in front of a bull. "But what about Microsoft?" they scream. This isn't about Microsoft. This is about the fact that attackers can't seem to be bothered to write OS X malware.
The Mac-fan community needs Microsoft like the Republican Party needed Sadam Hoessein, as God needs a devil. But the world isn't black and white.
March 21, 2007 at 08:11 PM | Permalink
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Comments
You're right in general; but then, today, we hear of NSA giving OS 10.4 high marks. I read it at:
Comments?
Posted-by: R Boylin | 21 Mar 2007 21:40:17
The title of this article is rhetorical. There is a simple way -- have all the Wintel fanboys shut the fsck up about the Mac. It gets really tiresome reading all the BS about the Mac, things presented as fact when quite often there is not even any truth in what is being presented. I could care less about the Wintel world, whether it's prospering or failing. All that matters to me is that Apple continues with their search for excellence. I get it. Apple gets it. Enough said.
Oh, and one more thing...
I concur that Apple needs Microsoft. There is no doubt in my mind that Apple aspires to excellence because their relatively small market share dictates no other choice. Were it Apple that made it to the top years ago, I doubt they would work at the exceptional level they do now. Thank you, Bill.
Posted-by: Mac Fanboy | 21 Mar 2007 23:34:48
How does one determine what "a fair share" of vulnerabilities is? Why did Vista attempt to copy security features of OS X, if OS X weren't inherently more secure? There is so much raging Mac jealousy out there--especially regarding security--it's a delicious target, despite rationalizations that there's simply disinterest on the part of malware authors. No one's screaming "what about Microsoft." The proof's just in the pudding. Windows advocates apparently just can't handle it.
Posted-by: Zpf | 21 Mar 2007 23:52:46
I am NOT a Mac fanboy.
I am a Mac fanMAN.
Posted-by: Uncle Paul | 22 Mar 2007 00:51:37
The first person to create a successful virus for the Mac would be famous. You don't think they're trying? There is a simple reason for this so-called "mysterious" lack of Mac malware. It's not mysterious at all. Macs are inherently much harder to attack, because most attacks would need to be approved by an administrative user before they could proceed. End of story. It is a myth to say that Macs aren't inherently more secure.
Posted-by: Nunuvyer Bizniz | 22 Mar 2007 01:19:25
When nipple heads such as yourself stop trying to tell logical people that a snowflake is the same thing as an avalanche.
When door knobs such as yourself stop comparing a 5 year old Apple OS with a brand spanking new MS OS (& still don't get the facts straight). When hacks such as yourself stop comparing something that exists with something that does not.
Why exactly again do I need MS? Oh yeah more bullshit & blah, blah, blah. Why does the Windows community seem to blow everything out of proportion when Apple's name is on it? I can go to any number of Mac sites & never read about Windows. Nothing is perfect, what denotes the quality of a product is the amount of imperfections. Windows (in the past) was not designed for a networked world. Some might call that a lack of vision. Let's see what the future holds.
Posted-by: Joe S. | 22 Mar 2007 01:34:38
This isn't about Mac fanboys it's about misreprentation and journalistic ethics. The article *ascribed* the statement that Macs aren't inherently more secure than other OSes to a security researcher who said nothing even remotely of the kind. Don't you people care about accuracy? Or do you leave that concern to the "fanboys"? I expected a retraction not a disgusting rearguard action.
Posted-by: Still unimpressed | 22 Mar 2007 13:06:59
You are an idiot.
Posted-by: wiseguy | 22 Mar 2007 14:30:45
Hello,
This is Shaun Nichols, author of the article in question. Given the amount of debate that has been generated about the article, particularly the passage about Macs not being inherently more secure, I thought I should clarify a couple of things for Still unimpressed and others.
The passage was not a direct quote, and therefore was not attributed as such. It was a paraphrase gathered from several paragraphs in which Mr. van Oers points out that *nix derived systems, of which MacOS X is one, are still vulnerable to malware.
"The number of *nix malware might not be that big, but if we consider that a large number of E-mail and File servers actually run *nix versions, then the impact of successful *nix malware might be bigger then initially expected. The problem with *nix malware is that there are a lot of different flavors/distributions and kernel versions. ELF binary malware is highly susceptible to these variations and most times will fail to even run properly, resulting in segmentation faults etc. Many malware packages actually come with a set of scripts and have the viral source code in source files like .c embedded in the package and can perform local recompiles, with say gcc, as to enhance the chance of binaries running fine. Such packages are easy to spot but not so very successful when executed.
In fact there are open source implementations of .NET like the mono project. With that, the distribution/flavor/kernel version dependency is pretty much gone. But so far projects like mono have not integrated fully into popular distributions like Suse or Redhat. In fact there also exists support for the SunOS and Macintosh, so in the future this could be mis-used for malware.
...OSX is originally based on BSD. One shouldn’t run by default with root access so adding/modifying system binaries should, in theory, not be that easy to achieve. Nevertheless *nix rootkits do also exist, so a perfect guarantee can’t be given.
Also, on OSX systems, the source code is available for many components. This can make it easier for malware authors to write malicious code/exploits."
At no point did the article say that OS X was less secure than Windows. As both a journalist and a loyal Mac user, I stand by my article 100%. If anyone has any further concerns regarding this or any other article I have written, feel free to contact me at the above email address.
Posted-by: Shaun Nichols | 22 Mar 2007 16:55:56
Spanish
